Spreading the news in JRA surely was slow before we got a website in 2010. My story about that new sail was signed the 4. Dec 1994, but when NL 29 landed on my doormat (3.3.95), there was nothing about it there. Only in NL 30 (8.9.95) was the story included. In other words, it took one year and three months from bending on the sail, to showing it in the NL.
I wonder if the lack of interest in the nineties partly stemmed from the busy discussions around Bunny Smith’s Insect Flight Theory (IFT) and development around this.
Things slowly started to change after the first JRA rally in Stavanger in 2004. Robin Blain sailed my Johanna, and appeared to be surprised by her narrow tacking angle. Slieve McGalliard wrote a comprehensive technical report from that rally in JRA NL 44 (Jan. 2005), which may have triggered a few.
The web has changed this. Info flies infinitely faster: After my first sail this spring, at 4. April, I wrote about it the day after, and then it was instantly available to anyone.
And they say everything was better in the old days - hah!