Been windsailing for about 3 years and a dealer for sirocco landsailers in the state of washington USA We are 70 miles from the pacific ocean on the columbia river.
Enough about me, by the way, your forum is great!!!! A buddy of mine gave me 6 old windsurfing sails and I want to use the on my sprint and twin. This is how I found your forum I,m having a hard time understanding the article that paul put on the forum as I do not understand metric. I have been a custom cabinet builder all my life and it is hard to convert at my age. By the way, we were at ivanpah dry lake when richard jenkins broke the record. "WOW" We go there twice a year for a factory fun sail. Anyway, keep up the good work on the forum. Any input would be great.

Windcrazy
Wind & Sand Landsailers
Longview Wa USA

Guddy Walter
Welcome to the forum, you will certainly enjoy the the amount of info here and the wonderful help and ideas from all the guys here. I know exacly what you mean about understanding and using metric units. Even though I used metric units at college for fourteen years, I finished up still having no idea what the units mean or how they are used. Now at my age, I couldn't care less. The only units I ever use (when I have to) are millimeters and I always convert them to inches when I use my lathe as all my tools are Imperial.
If you divide the number of millimeters in any of the drawings by 25.4 you will get inches, a far better and more understandable unit to work with. At our outstanding level of maturity, the wisdom of Imperial units is fully recognised and understood. The problem with the (ignorant) metric system is that the units are either far too big or far too small and have no relevant bearing. A typical exanple is shown by the use of liters (litres). We down here loose hundreds of thousands of "megaliters" of water when the country floods. So how "big" is a megaliter? Now you and I and all other mature people know exactly what an "acre foot" of water is and we can instantly visualise such a volume and apply it to the irrigation of our farmland, but megaliters has no meaning whatsoever. Everybody who has not reached our level of mature understanding tell me, over and over, "Kody, get real, metric units are the best thing out since sliced bread!". One day the truth of the matter will dawn on them all. It's a shame that us wiser and more knowledgeable people are are becoming fewer in number each year.
If you have trouble with any of the drawings, let me know and I will convert them to the correct units for you and send you a CAD drawing dimensioned correctly to explain the construction techniques. To convert square meters to square feet, multiply the square meters by 10.76 and to convert square meters to square yards, multiply by 1.195. The need to carry a calculator around all the time is a real pain but some of us have to carry the nation on our shoulders.
Enjoy the forum,
Kody

Welcome Windcrazy, thanks for the kind words about the forum!!

Luckily we have Kody, and a couple of other mature landsailors here, who speak your "measurement" language and can translate for us.

I must admit I do all of my building and woodwork in metric, but every time someone asks me how big something is, I always seem to say the answer in feet and inches - for example I know I'm 5'10" but I have no idea what I am in cm.

iand said...

Just a little correction Phil-mature aged but not mature

I resemble that Ian!!!

iand said...

Just a little correction Phil-mature aged but not mature

Bwahahaha!! I was trying to be nice!

I got caught out buildng a boat in inches.I bought a ruler with inches and mm on each side. after 2 weeks I realized that one side had Japanese inches- divisions in 10ths not 8th of an inch! . I had to rebuild 2 bulkheads as a result
Keep in mind ifthe sail is metric, eg 4.5m, you will need a metric ruler, thread, needles , to recut it

May as well get used to it its going to happen for you guys anyway

And just wait for minute....metric time is next......
zapatopi.net/metrictime/

Ya! It's all ready in our vehicles. That's why I don't work on them no more.
There is only so many things you can do with a cresent wrench. Try to post some pics this week-end as the weather is suppose to be warm and windy. What's the best way to make a one peice carbon mast into a two peice. The mast was given to me so the price was right, also got a fiberglass one. The are both 460's, what ever length that is? They are much easier to store as a two peice. How come you guys don't use aluminum tube for your land yacht frames? My sprint only weights about 60 lbs put together, but then when I put my ballast on it, it becomes a anchor. Well enough from this end of thew pond.

PRAY FOR WIND

Windcrazy said...

How come you guys don't use aluminum tube for your land yacht frames? My sprint only weights about 60 lbs put together

In Australia aluminium of suitable sizes and grades are VERY hard to find, recently several of the aluminium manufactures / suppliers have combined and further reduced the range of tubing.
Many yachts now sailing in Oz use a torsional frame that allows twist of the main spine tube, and also reduces the pressure on the mast / sail. Buy building the yacht in steel of varing grades enables home builders to construct high performance yachts.
The weight of the Lefroy mini yacht is similar in weight to yours.