The original Red River wave sail was designed for Rachel Medd by Sean Cox in the late 1980s.
It was a brilliant sail and decades ahead of its time, but it kind of got a bit lost in the hype that surrounded the fashions of the era.  Monofilm, 5 batten sails, gunny wave boards and the laydown bottom turn style were dominant for a generation and left little room for any other ways of doing things.
Sails made out of "funny" laminates didn't really get a look in, and so the Red River was known to a select few as a favourite wave sail without, perhaps, the wider audience it deserved.
Matthew would never let it go though - he had his first Red River wave sail in 1988,  a 4.6,  and to this day he swears blind it was the best wave sail ever to have existed. He was 16 at the time and he got to choose the colours, purple luff tube and battens.... lush! He has continuously made himself and a few others, versions throughout his sailmaking career.
Fast forward to 2014 and times have changed. A general acceptance of laminate sailcloths, tighter on the face vertical wavesailing style and an acceptance of wave sails with less structure  got Matthew to revisit the design. This time around the sails have become slightly shorter, a bit more colourful but in every meaningful way they are true to the original concept.
Proper wave sails
- ultimately manoeuvreable
- powerful for a small size
- completely depowereable by virtue of their soft luff (short mid batten)
- hard and fast accelerating
- whippy.
- tough as old boots
- light as a feather

This one is a very light 4.6, it has a completely soft luff with the sail able to feather right from the 2nd batten down to the bottom batten, we tried some funky shaping and stretch in this sail. It was amusing giving this sail to Andrew to sail. Lets just say he was less than impressed when rigging it up It is just too different to get his head around. He thought with the absence of battens that it was going to be all unstable to sail, it isn't.
It was his reaction after sailing this one (very positive) that persuaded Matthew.
The time was right to bring the Red River back.

 So after a bit of head scratching, and several hours sat in front of the computer,  running numbers, drawing and redrawing  we are onto a new version of the sail. Incorporating all our current understanding,  here is the first of the new Red River Soft wave.
 and if you don't like that colour scheme- what about something else?

Authors: 5 oceans

Read more https://5-oceans.blogspot.com/2014/01/softly-softly.html