Category: nasa
Sail Testing
I don’t remember exactly when but somewhere during my sophomore and junior years at URI I responded to a posting on the bulletin board at the student union. This led me to Mr. Lynch, who became a lifelong friend. It was a request for someone to do sail testing. Mr Lynch had a friend named Domina Jalbert. He had invented the re-entry parachutes for the space capsules for NASA. A man from Pawtucket, RI, who loved flying kites. He had an idea for sails and needed some practical testing and feedback.
I provided a sail from one of our Beverly dinghys as a pattern, and was shortly given one of Domina’s creations to test. I recruited anyone from the sailing team to sail against, more often than not it was Henry Bossett. I was not a good influence on Henry and his grades suffered.
I would give regular reports to Mr Lynch; effectively saying that the design had merit and deserved further exploration.
