I recently was referred to Arvel Gentry’s website to read about sails and how sails generate lift. Tillerman, has had a series of posts on this very same topic, and I’ve generally been one of the people involved in the discussions that followed. So I thought I’d write this post to see what Tillerman thinks of Arvel’s website and work.
Arvel also came up with a different tell-tale system that I’m considering adding to the Pretty Gee, to see if I can improve her performance. You can read more about his Gentry Tuft System here.
I think Gentry’s explanation of how sails work is the most correct of all the theories out there. However it is not all that easy for laymen to understand. My series of articles on this topic a few months back was to debunk some of the more obviously incorrect or partial explanations, and also to challenge my readers to come up with an explanation that was complete and scientifically correct while also readily understandable. Although we had a lot of fun with the debunking part we never really achieved that second objective. I was aware of the Gentry website and was planning to work round gradually to introducing his theories but the thread (or I) kind of ran out of steam.
I have seen some very good sailors with lines of telltales as recommended by Gentry. Some of them have several lines. I’ll be interested to read about your trial of them.
By the way Dan, every time I comment on your blog I get 2 error messages but the comment always seems to get posted.
The messages are…
Warning: XValidator::require(../wp-content/xvalid/xhtml-strict-10.php) [function.require]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/.vanilla/bigdog/dankim.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/xvalid.php on line 250
Fatal error: XValidator::require() [function.require]: Failed opening required ‘../wp-content/xvalid/xhtml-strict-10.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/local/php5/lib/php:.:.:.’) in /home/.vanilla/bigdog/dankim.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/xvalid.php on line 250
Yes, Tillerman, those two errors are caused by a bad line of code someplace in the PHP files. As I am not a programmer, I haven’t taken the time to hunt down the offending code yet. One of these days I’ll eventually do it, but since it doesn’t seem to affect the workings of the commenting system, I’ve lived with it for now.