As one of the authors of the WingNuts incident report, I’d like to correct a misconception in this article. While WingNuts had lots of sail area and low stability, she was flying a very conservative amount of sail at the time of the capsize, and her crew was attempting to furl the remaining portion of the jib. Her capsize was as a result of the velocity of wind and the windage presented by her hull, especially due to the wings, as opposed to her sails. When at 90 degrees, she may have had as much as 11′ of beam exposed to the wind, and with her crew falling to the leeward side, she had very little movable ballast to help her re-right.
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As one of the authors of the WingNuts incident report, I’d like to correct a misconception in this article. While WingNuts had lots of sail area and low stability, she was flying a very conservative amount of sail at the time of the capsize, and her crew was attempting to furl the remaining portion of the jib. Her capsize was as a result of the velocity of wind and the windage presented by her hull, especially due to the wings, as opposed to her sails. When at 90 degrees, she may have had as much as 11′ of beam exposed to the wind, and with her crew falling to the leeward side, she had very little movable ballast to help her re-right.
Chuck Hawle