Sport Today

I have an assortment of North flex top masts and a quiver of Ezzy sails
and they require a constant curve mast. I am wondering if anyone has ever
rigged a constant curve sail with a flex top mast and is there a feel
difference.

: I am wondering if anyone has ever rigged a constant curve sail with a
: flex top mast and is there a feel difference.

if you are light and the sails don't rig too poorly (twist off with downhaul).
non-race sails seem to be more forgiving (i had good? luck with newer single
cam sails on flex top masts then with newer race sails)

some of the north "flex" masts were actually combination (in between flex &
contant) they were numbered 1 thru 5: with 1 being truely constant curve
and 5 being totally flex top (look on the base to see if its still legible)

of course there is a difference, and you will pay a penalty for even using
the wrong stiffness constant curve mast. i now have the proper mast for each
sail i own, and this really seemed to improve the range of each sail.
stew

I do have an Ezzy Wave 4.0 (designed for Constant curve) which i also
tried once on a North HD epoxy flextop mast (the indestructable blue
base /
yellow top beast): Works but does not look as nice as with the correct
mast. On the water i could not tell the difference.

From another try with the same old mast and a Zeta 5.0
(which normally lives on the same mast as the Ezzy 4.0) i
 would expect larger sails (larger than 5.5 especially) to be more
critical however so you might want to consider saving the old masts for
the small stuff only.

--
Wolfgang Soergel                  
Lehrstuhl fuer Nachrichtentechnik   phone: ++49-9131-857781
Universitaet Erlangen-Nuernberg     fax:   ++49-9131-303840
Cauerstrasse 7                      email:

D-91058 Erlangen, GERMANY
http://www.nt.e-technik.uni-erlangen.de/~wsoergel