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(courtesy of Yachts & Yachting)
Ian Bruce, the designer of the Byte was browsing Scuttlebutt one morning and happened to read an article by Paul Henderson, President of ISAF. In a nutshell, Paul said he was looking for a boat for the womens singlehanded Olympic Class out of the box mentioning two or three boats including the Byte. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then and who knows what Paul, or ISAF, is looking for at this point!
Reasoning to himself that he had already built one out of the box Olympic boat the Laser - then, why not another? He had a platform of over 2700 Bytes worldwide but felt that a 50 year old rig concept just wouldnt cut it in 2004. He turned to his 29er partner, Julian Bethwaite, arguably the worlds leading designer of the self-depowering skiff rig, and wondered if such a rig could work on a cantilevered mast singlehander. Piece of cake said Julien!! However, there had to be more of a reason to do it than that for the boat to have a chance of being really successful. By the way, there is no magic in the name CII. It is simply shorthand for Carbon, II (two) piece mast.
There is one, and only one, overriding reason to even consider replacing the present Olympic equipment. It is certainly not performance and definitely not the organization of the Class, both of which are superb it is simply COST. 
In a Class where money spent can equate directly to results achieved, where you can spend up to 4000 Pounds Sterling on a mast and usually require more than one, where a new sail is required for every major regatta and where you have to travel to Europe if you want to have any chance of being in the hunt, it only stands to reason that participation is concentrated amongst the have countries and is almost non-existent in the have nots.
Should you have any doubt of this just visit the Cadiz ISAF World Championship Website and browse through the Europe results. Summarized, they are as follows:
Participants: 116
107 entries from Europe/North America/AUS/NZL
Remaining entries from China, JAP, ARG and BRA.
There were NO entries from SE Asia, Africa, South Africa, Central America, Caribbean, Bermuda, India and Pakistan, the rest of South America and the rest of Asia.
There are, undoubtedly, a multitude of reasons why but they will all, in the end, come down to cost. Yes there are many young women now sailing with the goal of an Olympic berth but that number could be EXPLODED if there was a Class widely available around the world at a purchase cost that was unbeatable and an ongoing maintenance cost that was minimal. Not only would it make competing less expensive it would spawn the growth of a broad base under an Olympic boat and, more importantly, fuel the growth of female sailing at the grass roots level.
Ian set the priorities for the development as follows:
- Cost
- Cost
- Absolute one-design to include spars, foils and sails with equipment supplied by the Class if Olympic.
- World-wide manufacturing by independent builders operating at arms length.
- Performance to be improved over the Byte with weight range of sailor to be broadened to the maximum possible.
Cost
The Byte is already the lowest priced performance singlehander available in the world in whatever territory in which it is built. Ian, learning from his Laser experience, achieved this by developing a continuous laminating procedure for the boat that is not only fast but also eliminates fatiguing in the laminates due to secondary bonds. Bytes do not soften with age. The new mast and sail will definitely add to the cost of the boat but not as much as one would expect as the one-design aspect of these items, and their sourcing, will result in huge purchasing advantages. It is expected that the average worldwide price for the complete boat will remain under US$4000 and in some territories, well under that.
One Design
The concept calls for a two-piece mast with the bottom carbon fibre and the top a hybrid of carbon/glass, but mostly glass. The reason for the glass is that the self-depowering rig requires a flexibility in the upper mast that cannot be achieved with pure carbon as it produces too stiff a section. The mast will come from a single source and all builders around the world will be supplied from this source. They will all be of a uniform diameter, 
wall thickness and stiffness. The question of differing weights of crews is discussed in the Design Parameters section.
The sail will be a fully battened mylar laminate and is being developed by Ian MacDiarmid in Australia, working with Julian. Ian has been in the business of developing and producing skiff sails longer than most people have sailed their Byte and, together with Neil Pryde, developed and now produce the 49er sails. The first sails were made from a 3 mil laminate (49er material) that Ian felt was overkill and he has since had a 2 mil laminate produced especially for this project. The sails will be built by Neil Pryde in China and will be computer cut on a Gerber cutter. They will be absolutely one-design.
The rest of the boat, foils, fittings, control systems and boom will remain standard Byte with no changes of any sort required when upgrading the rig.
Manufacturing
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| The Singapore National Sailing Centre |
Performance
As pointed out earlier, cost and not performance is the real issue. That said, the design brief called for a shot at a rig that could be more powerful than the Byte in light air where the Bytes small sail plan puts it at a disadvantage, particularly in mixed fleets. Even though more powerful in light air, the rig should also be easier to hold up in heavy air to lower the weight of sailor who could handle the boat in a breeze. This would be particularly important to Asia and SE Asia. It sounded at the outset like a contradiction after all, it can be argued that no boat can be all things to all people - but that was the goal!
Ever since starting this project the argument has been heard that Europe sailors have to have a special mast/sail combination to suit their individual weight (yet we dont hear similar comments coming from the Laser Class!). In truth, if that option were available to the Laser sailor, you would elicit exactly the same comment!
The reason is straightforward. ALL the present singlehanders Finn, Laser, Laser Radial, Europe and Byte have what a sailmaker refers to as a triangular sail. There is very little roach, they do not use full-length top battens and the sails are all set on relatively stiff masts and NONE of them, Byte included, is self de-powering. Any bending of the mast to reduce the camber and to de-power the sail is accomplished with tension applied from the end of the boom to the mast tip. The BROAD parameters of mast bend, matching luff curve and camber of the sails for that Class soon become well established and the resulting dynamics of the leech then determines the weight of sailor that can hold up the rig and that narrow weight range becomes the required weight for that Class.
If the sails are not true one-design but measured to a rule and if the mast flexibility is changeable, then tweaking these variables WILL change the rig response for differing weights but still within the broad parameters above. This has become the rule in the Europe if you do not have the right combination of spar and sail for your weight in the given conditions, you are simply not in the race, regardless of your sailing skills. And what is the cost to find that magic combination?!
In a Class like the Laser or the Byte where the sail is one-design and the mast bend predetermined, the weight range of the sailor capable of sailing that boat narrows down EVEN FURTHER.
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| Note the flexible mast on the CII versus the stiff Europe mast |
This area distribution is supported on a mast with a very flexible top that bends more in the upper section than in the lower. This is a completely different dynamic from the triangular sails which must be hung on masts with a uniform bend to set properly. Note the contrast between the two rigs in the photograph.
The flexibility in the upper section of the CII, combined with the full-length battens, results in a sail that will open up in a gust faster than a sailor can respond with the mainsheet and will de-power dramatically in response to the Cunningham, which becomes the accelerator pedal. With a pre-bend always present in the mast, tensioning the Cunningham transmits a load directly to the mast tip and the mast bends in response, opening the leech. Add to this the fact that a batten always seeks to straighten itself out and the force against the mast track assists in the bending action.
Light air testing
The additional area of the CII and its distribution results in a boat that is about 4-5 boat lengths per minute faster than the Byte in light air. When sailed against the Europe and the Radial in winds under 8 kts the CII is markedly faster and the advantage appears to be more pronounced off the wind as the height of the CII rig comes into its own, particularly when the boat is heeled to weather, as it should be. None of this was really surprising. The question was rather whether or not this extra area and its distribution could be managed by the existing weight range of the Class. If it could not we would be defeating our purpose and particularly so in Asia.
Heavy air
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| Kelly Hand, Canadian National Team Coach and former Radial World Womens Champion powers up the CII in 8-10 knots true. At 154 lbs she is at the heavy end of the Byte scale. |
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| Lightweight Frederique Gagnon, 114 lbs, a member of the Royal St Lawrence 29er team who sailed the Byte for two years, takes the CII upwind in 18 to 20 kts true. She is at the bottom end of the Byte scale. |
The short answer is that the rig takes care of that automatically as, in lighter air, without Cunningham tension, with moderate mainsheet tension and with a slack outhaul the leech can be closed to develop the power a heavyweight needs.
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| Tai Lanson puts the CII through its paces on Northbridge Harbour, Sydney, Australia in gusty 22 knot winds. The configuration seen here does not exist on any of todays unstayed singlehanders. |
In the 8-12 kt range the CII is about 3-4 boat lengths per minute faster than the standard Byte and appears to be about even with the Europe upwind and downwind with no testing having been done crosswind. The speed against the Radial is also about the same but the CII points noticeably higher. In the upper wind range of 16-24 kts, testing so far has consisted of rig strength testing in Australia and testing varying mast stiffness on two matched Bytes in Canada. Tests against the Europe and Radial will only be carried out once the new mast mandrels have been completed and the (hopefully) final mast is available.
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| The most flexible of the masts showed excessive side bend in the lower third. |
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| Marc-Andr Litte and brother Pat do boat for boat testing in 16-18 kts. Pat to weather has the more flexible mast. White lines are overlaid on the photos and can be scaled to accurately assess mast bend. |
It has also been decided, in this final stage, to give away a little of the performance of the CII by lowering the CE of the sail about 100 cms (4) to make the boat easier to handle off the wind where it is extraordinarily fast.
Two things lie ahead in the program. Firstly, the mandrels must be completed and prototype masts again made to achieve the optimum feel and performance with the sails being tweaked to perfectly match the chosen mast. Secondly paid up members of the Class must be poled and vote on the direction in which they wish to move, or not move.
Final design development
The first masts off the new mandrels are expected to be available by the end of October and, with them, final costings on the finished product. Budget costs of the spars have looked very attractive and final costings on the sails, which we now have, are very satisfactory. There is no decision yet on start of production as the Class decision will have a large bearing.
At the ISAF Conference from Nov 7-15 in Barcelona, existing Olympic Classes and possible new Olympic Classes have been invited to exhibit their boats in the Convention Centre where the meetings will take place. The Byte has a reserved space and the CII rig will be seen by the sailing world for the first time. Ian Bruce will be at the meetings representing the Byte Class International Association on the International Classes Committee and also fielding any requests for information on the boat.
The Byte Class membership
Performance Sailcraft 2000 Inc., the Canadian builder, has spearheaded the development on the CII with the support of the existing builders. This was done so that, when it came time to decide on the fate of the rig, there would be a concrete design proposal and some real testing results to offer up to the Class. The response in Canada has been awesome and not only among Byte sailors but also from kids who have moved on from the Byte in search of the next cool level of performance in a singlehander but are still of a weight that suits them perfectly to the Byte. It appears that there would be a wholesale return to the Byte by this group as the rig is definitely cool!
The UK has just received one of the test rigs and will be testing it in the next few weeks. From there, the rig will go to Italy. By then, new rigs will be available for Singapore, Argentina, Brazil and Poland.
There are really four roads down which the Class can go:
- Reject the CII rig and exclude it from any Byte Class events. In such a case, the Copyright Holder and the manufacturers would then have to decide whether or not to create an entirely new boat with a new name and new Class structure.
- Elect to set up the CII as a completely separate Class (like the Radial) with its own Rules and Constitution but under the Byte Class International Association.
- Modify the Class rules to allow the CII to sail in Byte events with a separate start for the CII Division.
- Same as Item 3 but set a time limit during which any National Class Association must decide to change over to the CII rig entirely, stay with the mixed events as in Item 3 or stay with the present rig entirely.
Although No. 1 is an option, the Class executive are hoping that the Class does not elect to go down this road as it would surely thin the ranks of the existing owners and believe that any of the other options are a better solution.
No.2 is certainly an option there is enough precedent in ISAF to justify it but ISAF is not particularly keen on the proliferation of models within a Class and, with it, the proliferation of so called World Champions within that Class. The Laser is always used as a case in point in which there are, literally, dozens of World Champions.
No.3 offers a response to the above and it is a much simpler mechanism. It involves only a change to the Class Rules and not a completely new application to ISAF for Recognised or International status. It has the disadvantage of leaving any potential buyer up in the air about whether or not to purchase the boat with a new rig or and old rig depending on what sort of activity is likely to develop in the CII Division.
No.4 would seem to be the most likely road to success and the only real argument against an eventual total conversion to the CII is one of cost and the manufacturers have come up with a solution to that one.
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| 114 lbs (51.8 kgs) going to windward in 18 knots. An unbelievable rig! |
The eventual figures for the above pricing will have to be confirmed once the final costings come out of the mast development.
Polling of the Class will be done by email, or post if necessary, to all paid up members of the Class and will be done before the end of October, the goal being to have a response by the ISAF meetings starting on November 7th. In the meantime, intelligent comments are always welcomed on the chat page.