A-Class Europeans 2012: Vision camp Wrapup

Sent by Hans Klok –Catamaranparts.nl
Analysing the A-class Vision after the EC 2012 at Lake Garda, Italy.

“The Vision sailed into the top ranks at the EC and the basis for this great result was analysed which underlined what we hoped to find in the design stage. After the fine tuning done in the first year of its existence the Vision’s potential was shown in the German Championship with a 2nd place in light conditions and a 1st place in the French Nationals with more wind and high waves at La Rochelle leading up to this event.

The Vision was having good speed upwind in all conditions and was a treat downwind. It allows you to have a wider choice of sailing. Of the starting line you can accelerate in a straight line, you hardly ever have to bear away to pick up speed and then to start pointing. This gives you an obvious advantage. After that you can go for speed or height. The balance of the Vision is very good on the curved boards.
Tacking and gybing is very easy and quick in all wind conditions. And again the acceleration out of these manoeuvres gives an extra edge.

The hulls run clean through the water which is often well visible in the trail you leave behind. This gives you also the possibility to use a flatter sail trim as the hull resistance is lower giving you better top speed.
Downwind the platform of the Vision gives you a lot more choice either to sit and go deep, or trapeze and go fast. You do not have to go to trapeze early to keep the bows clear. This is due to the non-fashionable bow which does not have a negative component of force pushing the bow down further once pushed into a wave leading to a pitch pole. This makes life a lot easier for the average sailor and helps safety. It is ever so easy to lose your balance trapezing losing control over steering and being thrown off the boat by sudden direction changes. This has happened to the very top sailors recently.
We know the platform is very stiff, the stiffest we have measured by a factor 2 or more. This is very well visible in a number of photos taken at the latest EC. Together with the foils we have developed this attributes to a fingertip fine steering, without a trace of spinout. This cuts out sudden steering reactions. The Vision goes where you steer it.

The Saarberg mast was developed to a new bending characteristic which gave the need to develop the sail as well. Here especially Chris Field gets all credit as his expertise and quick feed back to what was the feel and experience in boat speed. We left the choice of sail completely with him. He and Micky Todd from Hammer sails made the combination work. Andrew Landenberger was using the same sort of mast getting the 1st place.
At the EC Chris showed the possibilities of the Vision to be quick so even when he had to pick up places he could have the speed to accomplish this. Getting from the starting line with minutes lost he accomplished to get back to 17th through this very competitive field of 95. Impressive.”

The Vision in short:
-Clean running
-Stiff platform
-Well balanced
-Can be pushed downwind
-Forgiving
-All-round
-Perfect steering
-Fast
Thanks to Chris we got the proof of the character we designed into the Vision.