Fond as we Merliners are of the volume of string in our boats, I'm interested in feed back on the idea seen the Solo stand at the Dinghy show - borrowed from the Finns apparently:-

The fourth control was allegedly to allow the mainsail tack to be pulled downwards and forwards towards the gooseneck.  The reported benefit was in drawing the camber of  the sail forward.  

My limited understanding is that more depth of camber forward is a good thing and this is one of the benefits of new sails.  In old sails the maximum depth of camber moves aft, making them less effective in driving the boat forward.  

For us budget sailors who forage for second-hand suits of sails, therefore a Tack inhaul seems just the thing - regenerating our tired rags.  

What do you clever rig control people out there think of this?

Whats the differance between that and using cunningham combined with tieinh the tack closer to the mast?

If memory serves, solos might just as well not have a cunningham, they tend to use their outhaul and kicker only, so is it possible that they have got lost in technobabble and forgotton what the other hole in the sail is for?

Ah, yes, but you can't adjust the tack when you are sailing if its tied, can you, Chris?

I seem to recall that Finn sails have a bit of 'round' cut in at the tack, so I guess, maybe, there is more play in the system, and more dramatic effect to be had...

Where's my hot knife?  I'm off to find a mainsail...

Europes have the tack "Inhaul".  My crew is off to Europe class training this weekend - I will report back with her findings!

We had just such a system on Beat Nik in 1963-67 however as sail cloth got more stable there seemed to be little if any benefit, Mike jackson (Who made his own sails.) had a similar concept on hid National 12's ans his Merlin Rocket, but it was a line sewn into the "bag" of the sail about 4" from the clew that pulled the flow forward and took out some of the fullness too. MAGS has a picture of the tack system taken at the Welsh Harp in 1965.

I have but it is very grainy and doesnt show too well!

As a past Solo sailor I think I can shed some light on this.

I think you will find that only a Solo with a North Sail would ever do this. As the old Trout rightly says the Finn sail has the corner cut off near the goose-neck, allowing more adjustment and the in-haul to be functional. The Solo North Sail is basically a scaled down copy of the Finn North Sail computer cut and semi-mass produced in the Far East somewhere.

Jim Hunt of Purple Marine (who has recently campaigned a Finn) is back in Solo's this year and is also the UK reseller of North Sails. He is a fan of the in-haul, and basically if Jim says it works then the rest of the Solo fleet will follow.

The other sail makers in the Solo Fleet do not cut off the corner, and pin the sail to the boom. The Solo fleet is very "fasion concious" (a bit like the Merlin Fleet) and Jim is a superb sailor, so everyone else will eventually want an in-haul fitted too.

I think for most Merlin sailors with modern Kevlar sails, it would have little difference and just be another variable to worry about.

Cheers

Just to add another point,
my main has a loose tack eye, I have a torpedo which slips into the luff groveand is allowed to go up and down as it so wishes, i do controll the luff with the cunningham only. 
The luff eye does move up and down during the race and seems to avoide any unwanted distortion in the tack of the main, that i have seen with the older pinned tack eye or even the strapped up eyes.

The theory behind this one is pretty good if you could get it to work but Im sure it requires a fair bit of sailmaker input.  If you have a sail which is fixed at the distance bands on boom and mast, i.e. at head and clew, then pulling a line on the tack will tension both the foot and the luff simultaneously, effectively applying both cunningham and outhaul to flatten and twist the entire sail.  The harder you pull, the flatter it goes, and it's one less string to let off at the windward mark.  Anyone want to give it a try?

If you think about the geometry the only way to control total fullness is at the clew (Try it with a sheet of A4 and you'll get the idea.), the tack lines, or similar, control the amount of cloth lower down and the position of the flow, which as has been said it pretty much pre-set in todays' very stable sails.

The other thing to bear in mind is that the sails are now cut for fairly bendy carbon rigs.  Both solos (alloy) and finns (carbon wing) hav relatively stiff masts.  This means that on a merlin, when you pull on that cunningham the sail stretches a certain amount, the mast bends quite a lot - as you can see by the position the top batten takes-up when you wang it on - modern cloth doesn't stretch by 6 inches!

This all has the result of pulling the flow down and forward.  I remain to be convinced that an inhaul is really neccessary in such circumstances!

Yes, that pretty much explains why we don't do it I guess.  The amount you pull in on the outhaul is a lot more on a Merlin and the amount of cunningham you whack on is a lot less but the tension is a lot greater.  To make this work will need a few pulleys and end up with more complexity not less to do the same job less well.

But then why do Europes use them with thier bendy masts?

Because they do not have a loose-footed sail nor need to get the entry of the lower main as flat as you do on a sloop rigged Merlin

Reason for in-haul, BLACK BANDS, it means for a boat like the finn the boom is as short as possible, the sail will be fixed outboard, less tackle, less weight, less inertia in the wron place probably shortens boom but 3-4 inches and in the finn that will get the boom lower on the deck, tigher leach etc,could be the difference between gold and silver.

I struggle with setting the bit of string that ties my tack to my (carbon) mast.

I can't get the hang of the bobble and string the sailmaker provided and I always seem to set it too loose and when I bang the outhaul on I get this crappy crease from the bottom of the track to the clew.

Boobles and string are definately the easy way. Don't know why you can't get the hang, will talk you through next time we see you.

Bobbles!! Where is that spell checker?

anything that a solo - stayed non rotating rig with fully battened main - is borrowing from the finn - unstayed bendy rotating rig is taking a leap of faith.  

Jim can do it as lots of people will follow him when he does it.  It may work, and it will worry the shit out of the people who are not doing it - which may mean it works.  You don't need to adjust if after all do you!

OKs and Finns have had such controls for years.  They need every inch of sail shape control they can get as the masts are only supported at deck level and they need to be able to use the same mast and sail combination across all windstrengths.  Accordingly luff, foot and leach tension and combinations thereof are vital.

Cheers Alan - Rutland I believe!

Bring on the Tiger!

I quite like the idea of one control that replaces the outhaul and cunningham and removes weight and length from the boom end - not sure I am brave enough to try it though.

More to the point, not sure it would make any difference to my own lamentable performance.....

Furthermore, I don't recall 'After Hours' in its original form having an inhaul, and everything else was adjustable in some shape or form!

Seems its one for the single handers, and until Jim Hunt returns to the fleet we shall probably not see the inhaul re-emerge on the Merlin.