Introducing the Viper solo. We have seen a lot of sailors enjoy the VIPER both double handed as single handed. When sailing solo, they simply leave the jib off and go out. The light weight of the VIPER makes the platform ideal to use the boat both in single as double handed mode.
As the current standard mainsail is developed for double handed sailing, this often gave too much power, tipping moment, to the sailors who were alone on the boat and obviously have less crew weight, we started to test a sail that suits better for the solo use.
Lowering the sail 40cm gave us two opportunities: the decksweeper sail is still F16 class legal (longer luff length is not allowed by the class rules) and less tipping moment from the head of the sail. This results in a sail that is easier to control and is much faster in solo mode. The feedback we get from everybody who tested it: the difference is very noticeable and makes the VIPER feels so much nicer and well balanced in solo mode.
To be able to fit the sail on a standard VIPER mast, we made a strop that is put between the main halyard ring & shackle and the VIPER solo mainsail. The strop will be included with the mainsail.
We tried several times, and hooking and unhooking of the sail goes exactly the same as with any other sail. The strop hooks when ring reaches the top of the mast, and to unhook you pull the halyard, twist the mast 90° to allow the ring to pass aside the hook.
To allow the sail the pass the gooseneck for the boom, we have a new gooseneck that can be fitted on the mast (old drill holes from old gooseneck can be reused!). This is the same gooseneck as used on the C2 F18’s. With this gooseneck you can still use the straight boom when double handed and take off the boom when solo sailing. The sail will slide along the gooseneck in the mast track.
The VIPER solo decksweeper mainsail is available for delivery now! Contact Windsport here.
