Robert Lainé

From Sailcut

My name is Robert Lainé. I was born in 1945 in a small town on the bank of the Loire river in France. I graduated as an engineer in electro machinery in 1968. Since 1970 I have been working in space engineering. I managed large projects like a large X-ray space telescope called XMM launched in 1999, the development of ATV (ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle) which is a 21 tons spaceship which will re-supply the International Space Station as off 2007 then the Ariane launcher department of the European Space Angency. Right now I am Chief Technical Officer of EADS Astrium.

Apart from working on space projects, I enjoy sailing.

This is why I design and make my own sails. I quickly found that good sails respected some basic aerodynamic principles. From there the first Sailcut was written on a home computer equiped with a Z80 processor! I had to work hard to fit the software in the 16 kB memory. Having solved this problem and having made a number of successful sails, I helped a friend sailmaker to evolve from the traditional design of sails on the floor to computer design of sails.

Another friend asked me to make a small software to speed up the design of hard chine work boats. This is how I got into the boat design arena and the first Carene software was born. As I enjoy working with wood, I also made a couple of boats for myself to validate the software.

Enjoy my software and do not hesitate to contact me at robert.laine @ sailcut.com for any question you may have.