plywood melon seed new rig

[Philip Maynard]

I made 2 changes recently, a centerboard to replace the curved daggerboard and a 75 sf marconi sail /w 2 reef points at 62 sf and 46 sf. I can raise and lower the sail and reef on the water. The new 16' hollow mast and curved boom saved 12 lbs over the previous rig. In May I had sailed in Assateague in 20 kt headwinds and 2 feet of water and then tried to tack up narrow shallow channels and I simply could not do it with the daggerboard. The centerboard is such an improvement. I'm still getting used to the rig but my boat seems much better for both of these changes. The last change which I will not do to this boat but would do if I was building another is increase the shear at the bow. In 2 foot following seas, it just barely bury's the first foot of fore deck. It has no tendency to submarine but now having seen that and looking again at the shear line, it would actually improve the looks to raise station 1 and 2, to get maybe 3" more shear at the bow. I have other pictures ("new-rig" below) of the reef points and the curved boom which is hidden behind the sail in the photo below.

new-rig (http://www.pmaynard.lunarpages.com/index_files/new-rig/)

http://www.pmaynard.lunarpages.com/index_files/new-rig/sail.jpg

[ion barnes]

Do you have the drawings? Whose design is it? Have you thought of building a model first?

[John B]

That is a really interesting boat you have there.
Amazing to me how far forward the board is relatively .A specialised thin water boat. :cool:
Do you have any other hull photos ? It's mostly in the shadow( on my old screen)

[BrianR]

Hi Phil! Nice to see you are making further improvements. As you know, I'm working on my Melonseed (strip built) and I'm using the marc barto plans. The plans call for a daggerboard. Frankly, I was afraid to convert to the centerboard because I can't calculate where the center of lateral resistence of the centerboard would end up in relation to the sail's center of effort. Did you do any calculations to figure that out? If so, would you share your thoughts on that with me? Thanks.

[Steve Lansdowne]

I eagerly await the reply also, as my Melonseed plans, along with my free WB Tatoo, just came in the mail!!!

Ion, see his pages at http://www.pmaynard.lunarpages.com for specifics. This is a plywood version of the Chappelle drawn plans from the Smithsonian.

[ 09-23-2004, 06:02 PM: Message edited by: Steve Lansdowne ]

[Philip Maynard]

The design is my adaption of melon seed shown in Chapelle's book. I have not yet drawn up plans, I wanted more experience with it before doing that. I did make a 1/4 scale model - that was the key to figuring out the bow for plywood. Here is a link to a rear quarter hull photo.
hull rear quarter framing (http://www.pmaynard.lunarpages.com/index_files/updated_photos/12-beam.jpg)

here are 2 more of the hull painted.

hull1 (http://www.pmaynard.lunarpages.com/index_files/updated_photos/hull1.jpg)
hull2 (http://www.pmaynard.lunarpages.com/index_files/updated_photos/hull2.jpg)

When I was first building it, it really didn't occur to me to build a centerboard as I was already doing so much just to get it to plywood, if I had seen plans for one I would maybe have thought about it and if I had sailed each one I never would have even considered the daggerboard. My daggerboard was extra horrible because I made it extra thick and heavy. If you make it thin and light and always sail in deep water then it's OK but I would still go with a centerboard, it's only a little more work and will forever be easier to deal with. I just looked at the original sail plan and daggerboard and measured their centers and then compared it to the new sail plan. It was a little farther forward of where I thought it should be but I did not think it would be that far off. I have done most of my sailing in the 4 weeks since building it with the board 1/2 way down. I did not have a good rig for adjusting the board, I have something now and I'm going on a 3 day camping sailing trip starting tomorrow in Assateague and I'll experiment more with it then. Working with the rear of the board being at the forward end of the cockpit, then the geometry of the centerboard is the smaller it is, the farther back the CLR is, the larger the board - the farther forward it will be. I reduced it to 32" length as what seemed a best tradeoff. Another drawback is that as I reef, the center of the sail moves forward and so you would want more board because it's center moves forward as it does down. This is exactly opposite of what you would want but is just one of the compromises.
Also I should mention that when I was burying the bow, that was with 3 days camping supplies and I had mistakenly put some of the heavier items all the way forward.

[John B]

fascinating. I've never seen anything like it. It never would have occurred to me to run the chines like that( especially the bow)but it works.
Thanks for the pics.
Elegant looking boat.