Custom Sail Designing and Manufacturing

I have received an exceptional amount of response from my last post. Much of it was in regard to the mention of offering custom designed sails and manufacturing. As I have done for much of the last 30 year, I am again offering custom design services not only for small sailboats, but also for sails or small craft rigs. I can design, prototype and test a sail or small craft rig. For small craft manufacturers with sufficient demand I can then arrange for manufacturing of the sail in different locations depending upon the quantity desired. This service would save the small boat company from maintaining such a specialized in house design team while at the same time producing sail designs at very high standards of quality and performance. Small sails are not usually available from the large commercial lofts at this level of quality. With my sailmaking and design experience dating back to 1970 including design and production of winning one design sails, offshore multihull sails and sailboarding sails years ahead of others then in the sport, I applied my experience to a specialization in small craft sails. I designed and produced elegant efficient sails for 23 years while owner operator of Balogh Sail Designs before I sold the company. Small craft manufactures can now have access to the fruit of that experience with designs based on a depth of experience designing and using the BSD sails and rigs. The new sails will be based on the nearly twenty additional years of experience since I produced the original designs for most of my BSD kayak and canoe sails. As has always been the case current Mark Balogh Designs will be years ahead of any of the competition. If you are interested in an advanced, unique and ground breaking sail or rig development for your small sail craft, kayak or canoe please contact me. Of course I can also develop complete small multihull designs. Thanks to all who wrote for your interest.

MBC&D news

It is beginning to look fairly certain that there will be a kit version of Wild Hare hopefully available by the spring of 2012. If it happens we will be hoping for distribution in both the US and Europe. More details as things firm up.
Work is underway on a design for a home build kayak sail rig with outriggers to be available possibly as plans or as plans and a kit. I have received serious interest in a rig with the exciting performance of Mark Balogh designs but at a price more accessible than my earlier commercial products. Please feel free to contact me with interest in or questions about this project.
I believe I now have arranged manufacturing for high quality high performance small craft sails. Anyone interested in a custom sail design produced at a very high level of quality please feel free to contact me. Please email me at mark at markbalogh dot com

MBC&D and Wild Hare update.

A couple of quick but important pieces of news today. First, I have entered into a dialog with a major Kit Boat company to explore the possibility of offering Wild Hare as a plywood kit boat. Further discussions are upcoming and I will post any outcome here as things develop.

Second bit of news is that due to a change in status in the purchase agreement I signed when I sold Balogh Sail Designs, I am happy to announce that I am no longer inhibited by a non compete clause. This means that I am now free again to offer kayak and canoe sailing equipment designs. I have some brand new ideas about these designs and hope to pursue them when I get some version(s) of Wild Hare into production. This same change in status coincidentally returns all rights to the BSD designs to me. It is nice to have these designs in my active portfolio again.

Wild Hare phase 1 is complete

The first phase of the WILD HARE design is nearing completion. For me a design starts as a concept and that concept is developed in a series of drawings done on paper. It is a method I have used for 40 years and it is efficient and comfortable for me. Today I will complete the concept drawings with a drawing of the second rig design. The main hull, single aka and amas are drawn and I am very happy with them. The WILD HARE is a performance oriented version of the POCO design I did in 2001 for Windrider that became the WR10 trimaran. The POCO was a breakthrough design in that it used only one aka and short amas to simplify and minimize the construction and user assembly of the boat. The amas were developed to provide both stability and lateral resistance for the POCO and the boat sailed very effectively on all points of sail without the use of a dagger or centerboard, leeboard or keel. This made the POCO very simple to deploy to the water and to sail. There were only two controls on the POCO, the main sheet to trim the single sail and the rudder uphaul to lift the rudder blade when returning to the beach. This minimalist configuration proved to be so successful that I decided to proceed with further development in the form of the WILD HARE.

The WILD HARE concept is one and a half times as long and wide as the POCO concept but with a more favorable length to beam ratio for all three hulls that will allow it to escape much of the wave making drag of beamier hulls. It still maintains the single aka configuration but with a folding mechanism rather than with demountable akas and amas. For robust simplicity and ease of use the WILD HARE continues with a single sail set on a cantilevered free standing spar. The WILD HARE uses an ama shape similar to the POCO but with further hydrodynamic developments to increase lift. The WILD HARE concept design is intended for plywood/epoxy construction to facilitate easy prototyping but also to prepare it for a potential market as a kit boat.

There are two rigs drawn at this time. Both rigs are drawn to be 8.3m2 The first rig is a higher aspect modern full batten sail set on a carbon fiber mast. For prototyping it will likely have some variation of a half-wishbone boom. I hope to test some aerodynamic enhancements for the sail and a very interesting automatic canting system for the mast. Very, very, exciting concepts for an inventor and sail/rig specialist like myself. As I am expecting to make this design commercially available I will for now keep the details of the rig innovations under wraps.

The second rig is conceived for the home builder. It is drawn as an advanced version of a traditional rig so that the home builder can fabricate the spars without need for exotic, expensive materials. This version will attempt to reduce the drag normally produced by some similar traditional rigs. It is a lower aspect rig than the first rig and as one would expect, it is anticipated that this rig would not be quite as effective as the high aspect rig to windward. It is certainly possible though that the enhanced traditional rig would offer more power for off wind sailing.

Thanks to all of those who have sent questions and comments by email. As a general comment here in response, yes I am open to accepting additional inquiries in from potential kit manufacturers. Once the boat is ready I will be quite anxious to have the WILD HARE offered as a specialized kit with the option of a complete high aspect rig available with the kit or just the sail for the home built rig option.
For those who would like to write directly rather than posting a comment and who can’t find my email elsewhere, you can write to me at; mark@markbalogh.com