Sail test

Here is a shot with the sail and both the retractable fin and dagger board in the hull. (click on the image to enlarge)I am having some problems with the dagger board. The gasket material I used seems to be too stiff and does not allow the board to rotate up into the hull easily. I should be able to make some minor modifications to the dagger board to improve it's function. The winds were out of the NNW at 8-10kts with an occasional gust to 12kts. I was concerned about stability of the board with the changes we made to the free board and width. We narrowed the board down from 33" to 30.5" and at the tail we reduced the width from 25.5" to 23.5 and increased the free board by two inches. I had concerns that these changes would make the board less stable. Although we did not have much in the way of waves the board felt very stable. I went out into the mouth of the pass and the left over swell from yesterdays cold front allowed me to get a feel for its stability in waves. I sailed from about 12:30pm to 2:45. From the GPS my trip was 9 miles and max speed was 10.6kts and average speed was 4.6kts. I can tell that this new design is much faster than the first prototype. I cant wait to see what it will do in 15-20kts. I sailed up to the beach and asked a nice Canadian couple to video me as I sailed the board. The video is not too good, I think lighting had something to do with it and the fact I was too far away.
Leave a comment and let me know what you think.