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On the special looking top secret wedge beneath the transom of the new Ecover

Last week we had a ponder over a subtle wedge that had been pointed out to us beneath the transom on Mike Golding's brand new Ecover 3 Open 60, which her designers must have forgotten to mention to us when we were given our guided tour recently! Read this article here.

International 14 guru Archie Massey sent his thoughts in....

I think it behaves similar to the 14 T-foil.

Any displacement boat must have a run-off from the transom with a vertical component and hence the water will be travelling slightly up as it leaves the transom. This will create waves behind the boat. Obviously creating waves needs energy, so negating this wave generation is a good thing. (You'll notice that a well-sailed 14 creates no stern wake, unlike a 49er).

I would hazard a guess that the wedge is almost parallel with the waterline of the boat.

Alex Howarth writes....

Presumably this promotes environmentally sound planing.

Bill Tucker has his own conspiracy theory....

It is a fine example of psychological warfare. It's not really a wedge at all. It is a paint job to make it look like one. The aim is to induce other people to fair a wedge in without them realising that the induced drag will actually make them all slower. Very clever trick and sleight of hand reminiscent of the Black-decked Fireball at a Swedish-held world championships. The explanation given for the boats blistering downwind speed was that the thermals of the deck in the sun gave the kite natural lift thereby allowing all wind energy to go into driving the boat forward rather being wasted on getting the weight of the cloth to adopt the required balloon shape. The trick only became clear the following year when the worlds were held in Adelaide and the Black boat sailed equally fast but now with white decks. The dozen or so other competitors who had been fooled into turning up with black decks ended up with blistered derrieres whilst said white boat was splendidly cool in the heat.

Well done on such fine trickery! Oops - I didn't give it away did I?

Ecover 3 skipper Mike Golding himself is keen to throw us off the scent...!

I think it’s just a strip of laser tape you are looking at!

From the US, Tom Weaver writes:

Very interesting,  having forayed into the power boat world we are now familiar with the interceptor trim tabs, specifying them as standard on the Eastport 32. Interestingly we only use them for side to side trim (six fat blokes standing on one side of the boat). They are extremely effective and if we want to 'drive' the bow down and shoot rooster tails out of the tunnels we can do this with about 2cm of tab down at 30 knots. As they are fixed it would appear to me that they are using them in this case to effectively increase waterline length (more drag?) through the light air range then promote surfing as the breeze is up OR Clay has been watching too much NASCAR racing since he returned home from NZ. Bring on the rooster tails!!!

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