Wind indicator issues

When you sail a Laser, you usually have one of those wind indicators that wraps round the mast.

When I swapped from Lasers to Solos I still had mine, but I managed to break the mast mount bit, but with some spare bits of acetal plastic sheet I made a plate that screwed to the side of the forestay adjuster. In fact, it was one of my first blog posts - now lost in the mists of early 2022. It worked reasonably well, but when the forestay went a bit loose downwind the indicator flopped around which didn't help it's accuracy. And being low down on the bow possibly didn't help accuracy either.

I got myself a small 3D printer recently and one of my first things I wanted to make was a new mast bracket for the wind indicator. that wasn't too hard, so I made a whole wind indicator. My brother says the mast-mounted ones he uses on the Aero flap around a bit on the sea because the mast bracket is a bit narrow and the elastic rather weedy, so I was able to sort those issues out by upgrading the width of the bracket and the size of the bits that hold the elastic. I thought I was doing well - it looked snazzy...

and I thought "job done".

But I took it out for a test in a club race and found an issue. Quite a big issue.

Upwind all is fine. Though I don't pay that much attention to wind indicators upwind - it is more about the luff of the mainsail and the telltales.

Downwind you need the indicator more - especially to judge the wind when on the run. But as I turned on to a run the wind indicator just started spinning round in circles. I assumed I had done something wrong in the design, but it was not clear to me what was wrong.

Then I realised. The mainsail was blocking the wind from reaching the wind indicator. Of course! On a Laser the whole mast swivels, so the wind indicator moves with it - it is always roughly in line with the mainsail. Not so on a Solo - the indicator always points forwards. 😠

I looked at a fellow Frensham sailors boat - he had two mast-mounted indicators! Each was set at 45 degrees from the sail which meant at least one was always in roughly the right place. But as a solution it bothers me. A 45 degree angle isn't ideal and do I really want the windage and complication of two wind indicators?

At least I knew the problem I saw was real though. Clearly other Solo sailors have hit this problem before.

I don't have a nice end to this blog post, but I am working on a new wind indicator. I am designing one that will swivel round the mast with the sail. As an engineering problem I don't think it is too hard, but the latest design still needs some work and some testing.

I will put the new prototype on the boat this week for the Sunday club race and if all goes well the following week (19th May) for the Frensham Solo Open meeting. It might not help my results to test anything out at an open but let's face it, last year there was no wind at all for the open and I left at lunchtime, so this year can only be an improvement! I will write about the new wind indicator design afterwards - fingers crossed it works 🤞 ⛵