Exploder D3 R&D Camp @Ría de Arosa, Spain

Video Gonzalo Redondo / D3 Applied Tehcnologies. –  Several top sailors including Tornado gold medalists Fernando Echavarri & Anton Paz, also Manuel Calavia, Tara Pacheco, Tamara Echegoyen (Gold Match race) , Santi Estevez and José Manuel Perez. All testing & flying the Exploder D3 A-Class near Gonzalo’s own office.
Gonzalo recognize and I know for a fact he hasn´t the A-class sailing hours that Mike Drummond or Pete Melvin might have for ie, so seeing him flying quite stable at 3:25 its a good test for his own designed D3 foils and platform (along Jakub Kopylowicz/Exploder).
Not that they are short of feedback…! with the lineup above along Bundock, Brewin and the Polish Armada.

Been talking with many lately on the need to keep pushing flight devel towards more stable and easier flights, so the rookies and maybe older sailors can join the foiling A-Cat club with less effort.
Latest devels are showing we are slowly getting there, along Dna , Scheurer and others own r&d..
In this aspect many of us are targeting easier and more stable flight, not to bypass the great learning process  which I enjoyed and still learning plenty, but to have more people involved in the game.

R&D continues towards Sopot Worlds 2017 to be held August 19-26: Aclassworlds2017.pl/
We asked Gonzalo to know a bit more of the training and setup/equipment devels:
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Hi Martin
“We did host a training camp in the Ría de Arosa, at the Centro Galego
de Vela.

This place is a huge estuary with flat water no matter the
wind conditions. Without waves it is easier to get leveled with your
training partners so we can run speed trials and test different
equipment and setups.

Jakub is doing a fantastic job both building plenty of boats and
feeding the team with prototypes. Still Z10 is a very good all-around
foil which is why it is in production. The rib was carrying different
prototype sets and we were hot-swapping them.

This camp was also very good for testing different setups:

– Ruder rake rake: Right now
with upwind foiling we are going with up to 1.0deg positive rudder rake.
If you are not foiling upwind then a touch less works good as well. It
also depends a bit on body weight.
– Foil rake: downwind ranges from 0.5 to
3.0 degrees depending on conditions.
– Mast rake:  somewhere between 3.5 and 5.0 is also working alright with our boat, the
Exploder AD3.

What’s great about the sailors line up we had for this training camp
is that these guys and girls are pros, and they learn so much quickly
than everybody else!
This could be seen in just 4 days of sailing and
the last day’s performance and overall setup was so much better.

For us
as a design office this brings very valuable input later enriched by
that of the Australian and Polish squads. Plus since I sail the boat
myself I can go gather it on my own too!

Exciting times, foiling more stable every day and pushing the boats harder. Most importantly, having fun!”

Regards,
Gonzalo.
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