A-Class: DNA Racing debut

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Photo: Eva Fagnoli / www.evarte.it Roland in front of Baier – All HQ pics (click to enlarge) by Eva Fagnoli www.evarte.it

The DNA is a scaled down Alinghi! will post to compare some features this week.
Roland Wentholt ended 3rd overall with a brand new DNA launched almost in site.

DNA performance at Vele di Pasqua report by Arno Terra, one of the creators of the DNA at ARC (Advanced Racing Catamarans) DNA sails in pics made by Landenberger, full sail design report in previous post.
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Sailing with the DNA.
“At Easter during the Vele di Pasqua the DNA made his debut. It was the first serious sailing with it. Prior to that it had only a shake down (‘floating test’) in the Netherlands.

The boat sails very smooth upwind, the bow is never lifted up and goes nicely through the waves. Although it has quite more volume than both the Nikita and the Flyer 2 it handled the chop in Cesenatico pretty well. The relative flat bottom made footing really fast, while pointing was never a problem.

The real pleasure is reaching and going downwind. The sharp nose does slide through the waves like a knife through butter. The boat is never slowed down and feels light and is easy to keep at consistent high speeds.

Once the hull comes out of the water the boat is easily powered up and can be pushed firmly even in the light to medium conditions in Cesenatico. Roeland did his wild thing hanging out, while others were still sitting in the middle of the trampoline. It seems very well suited to apparent wind sailing and it feels sometimes more as a lanyacht than a beachcat.

He could easily match the speeds of both Bob Baier (Nikita) and Thilo Keller (Thilo special) and sailed away from Arno Terra (Flyer 2) and Chris Field (Tool). Chris was so impressed (intimidated?) that he imediately ordered an DNA on the beach in Cesenatico. He will sail his new boat in the Worlds.The DNA has its say in the curved board controversy as well. Some people do not believe in curved boards and have abandoned this route. On this blog you could read ‘It seems curved foils doesn´t make a huge performance diff as results in past regattas, although is being used and adopted by many in the class, including German ace Bob Baier.’

If you look at the results you see that the complete podium is filled by the curvies. If on the other hand you look at the Australian nationals the first curvie scored fourth place and the second sixteenth place. In Cesenatico more boats were sailing with curved boards (Titan, Schreuer, Flyer 2 of PJ) and they did not particular well.

We found out that the right boat with curved boards is faster once you can do the wildthing.

When we designed the DNA we had test sailed the Nikita and were pretty sure afterwards that it was not the curved boards alone that made the difference. It’s the whole package. E.g. all podium boats in Cesenatico were carbon-nomex (honyecomb) boats, had front beams clearly behind the middle, had ultra sharp, low drag inversed bows and exactly fitting daggerboards.Therefore the boat design had to fit the curved blades and had to be extremely stiff (both hulls and beams).

To impove both stiffness and durability we decided not to build the lightest boat possible but the stiffest boat possible. With all gear it will be 75 kgs and not less. Curved blades have to handle bigger loads and we decided to design and produce ‘unbreakable’ boards (with a guarantee under racing conditions). Thsee boards are only half a pound heavier than traditional boards but the zero failure rate is worth that.

Coming weeks we will produce more boats and will further tweak it. CU all in Cesenatico at the Worlds 2010″.

Arno Terra
ARC Advanced Racing Catamarans
https://dnacat.blogspot.com/

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