Novel sensor for the measurement of draft in mainsails

The measurement of the actual shape of a sail during navigation is an important issue both for skippers and sail makers. Besides sophisticated optical approaches based on artificial vision or based on the use of fiber optics glued within a sail, we propose to directly measure the mainsail's draft by means of a full bridge strain gauge (specifically designed for this application on PCB) applied on the two sides of a fiber glass batten into an horizontal section of the sail. The proposed approach reveals to be accurate enough and has the benefits of a cheap implementation so that it can be used not only by racing yachts and sail makers but also by leisure yachts owners. Moreover, thanks to the wireless data transmission, the proposed system can be easily integrated in a network of multiple sensors completing in this way the set of navigation data.