hi there just wondering weather many people out there have tushingham lightning sails?

just wondering what your thoughts are on them?

good bad or really bad

any thought would be great

thanks
ben

I've got a 6.0 that's a few years old. Not a bad sail, user friendly etc, but I had one beef with mine.

It was super knucklly up front, so much so that, the first couple of times I rigged it, the bottom batten snapped. I was rigging it with the cambers pointing down, and as the weight of the rig went on the battens they snapped. From then on I made sure the cambers pointed up when I downhauled it.
The other problem with this was the sails stability, starting off from very underpowered, the sail shape slowly moved backwards, the center of effort with it.
So in gusty conditions I was always adjusting the harness lines lines or getting sore arms.
I just about completely cured this by changing the front of the cambered battens, to almost untapered, this got rid of the extreme knuckle, making the unpowered sail much closer to the powered up sail shape, and making the battens stronger.

I think this problem may have been specific to the year mine was made, as I've seen other lightnings that are OK.
Unfortunately I'm not sure what year mine is, I bought it second hand a couple of years ago.

bh2905 said...

what sort of boards are you guys using ?

i am thinking about a 9.4 to use on my raceboard

biggest i have used was a 7.8m lighning on a SX XL 135L.They have great bottom end. You might be better off with their dedicated long board sail. I thinks it called XR Race

You may find that this post may disappear at any moment bh, but if you check out the Tushingham website, you will find out who the Australian importers are, and you will be able to pick up one of those excellent sails there.. I'm sure.
The Lightning has just received top marks in a UK test..... yet again.
Cheers.
Jez