pointing tips w/ a sprit rig

[andrewjeffrieswebmail]

Hi - I recently bought a used 18'6" Good Little Skiff (Culler's design), and shared info + photos of the boat in separate posts here. I have some questions about handling this kind of rig, and would appreciate any advice our group could offer. My boat has a spritsail rig, and I truly appreciate its large sail area and unmatched simplicity of handling. However, candidly speaking, it doesn't point worth a damn. : ) I certainly didn't buy this boat as a need for speed, and I absolutely love the unique sailing adventures it offers. However I do wonder if I don't understand this rig well, and wonder if I should get advice on improving how I manage it. Obviously, this rig has no boom. Thus no vang. No downhaul, no outhaul, no stays, no shrouds, etc. Nothing. Essentially NOTHING to tune, except a mainsheet. And, no actual blocks or tackle aboard .... just some slender, elegant slotted oak runners on each side of the helm. Elegant? Yes. Precise? No. : )

Over the years, I've sailed / crewed many many different small boats (29'ers, 49'ers, Tanzers, Thistles, Flying Scots, Lightnings, etc). All of those little gems had some amazing tuning features, and I think I got a bit spoiled. The sprit rig on this Good Little Skiff just confounds me. My wife and I laugh about it, as we prepare to tack, then come across the wind, then encounter a feeling of "falling off... falling... falling.... falling...". The bow does eventually come back around, and attempts to head up somewhere near to the desired point of sail. But it certainly doesn't point well. And, falls off quite a bit, such that I wonder if I don't really appreciate how this sail configration is handling the wind.

Any advice on how to properly handle a sprit rig? I don't plan to go one-design racing with this... but I would like to improve its ability to point a tiny bit closer to the wind.

Thanks for any info you'd offer.

Andrew
"Water Rat" 18'6" Good Little Skiff

[Don Kurylko]

I share your frustrations with the sprit rig. It is a great auxiliary rig for a nice pulling boat where rowing is primary and the sail is only used for a free ride off the wind. I especially like being able to roll up the sail all standing around the sprit, lash it to the mast, and stow it along the thwarts when it is not needed. But for any kind of serious windward work it is a disappointment – or so I thought - until I add a small jib to one of my skiffs and wham it transformed into a whole different boat! It really worked to windward. I was amazed.

The jib was set flying without a forestay and sheeted to the rail. Nothing fancy, but it did the trick and the boat became a lot of fun to sail. It is the only thing that I have found that helped windward performance other than, perhaps, adding a boom for closer sheeting and possibly a vang to the end of the sprit to keep it from sagging off so far.

See if you can borrow a small jib from someone and try it out. It should make a difference.

[Wooden Boat Fittings]

.
I agree entirely with what Don says. A jib makes such a heck of a difference I'd no more think of sailing without it that I would without the rudder. Aileen Louisa's is set flying, from a removable bowsprit. The halyard acts as a shroud on side side of the mast. (The mainsail halyard does the same on the other side.) The sheets are brought back to the helm via lizards fastened to the rising about level with the forward end of the c/b case.

http://www.woodenboatfittings.com.au/boats/aileenlouisa/aileen-louisa-s.jpg

There's no reason why you shouldn't add a boom if you want to. Some people will tell you it aids performance, and I wouldn't disagree with them. The main benefit is when running though, when the sail can tend to belly forward and flop into a bit of a bag. However, this is easily cured by booming out the clew with an oar or boathook.

Personally, I removed the boom from my boat as soon as I got her and I've never been sorry I did. Apart from anything else, the ability to brail up the sail easily when it's unboomed is simple and remarkably useful. (It can be done boomed too, but the boom needs to be designed for it, and it takes more lines to manage the process as well.)

http://www.woodenboatfittings.com.au/boats/aileenlouisa/al-brailed1.jpg

Mike

[Hwyl]

Hmm, what everyone else said. I'll ad that I think Culler was more interested in making boats look salty than making them sail.

I see in your other posting you wrote

1) The mast has 2 step choices, about 15" apart, the first one about 24" from the bow. In which wind conditions would I use which step? The sprit rig seems to handle best with the mast in the forward step, on reaches and points approaching the wind. Running downwind doesn't seem to matter, which step position I use.


So maybe you should use the aft step with te jib.

You say there's no adjustment, but the =re must be some kind of snotter (sanitized by the Optimist association to "sprit tensioner"). Fit one and try tightening the heck out of it. Or recruit a local hot Opti sailor, or even a sane Opti parent (if one exists), and ask them to sail with you.

I should add that the position of the heel of the sprit can also be adjusted to give "head tension". I've never played with that, except on a sailboard, which has similarities to a sprit rig.

[Hwyl]

Here's your boat by the way
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3169/2936056749_880bddd5aa.jpg?v=0

You could clearly use some luff tension in that picture

[Wooden Boat Fittings]

.
Gareth's idea of using the after step with the jib is clearly correct. AL was built with two steps and partners like your boat, with the forward set requiring one to use essentially a catboat rig as you've presently been doing.

AL's bowsprit can only be used with the mast at the after position though, and once I was clear I was going to always fit it so as to be able to use the jib, I removed the forward set of partners (ie mast thwart) altogether.

With that out of the way I was able to fit a triangular grating right up in the eyes, seated on the risings, to stow warps and keep them clean, away from the anchor on the burden-boards underneath. And as a bonus, I can now even get in there myself at a pinch if necessary (a la Roger in Swallow.)

http://www.woodenboatfittings.com.au/boats/aileenlouisa/al-forward-kevel.jpg

[Christine DeMerchant]

Hi Andrew
My Skerry has a Sprit and I've been sailing her all summer. Unlike your rig it has a boom. On a couple of occasions I sailed her without the boom, loose footed.
It was a night and day difference.
I've found that the boomed sprit could point as well as expected, very near the 45 degrees that seem common with the boats at out club. Its a simple setup and gives much more control I think. The specified rig has only one block but I added one to get a bit better mechanical advantage and this worked well. The link shows the boom quite well. Its a bit different from what the designer drew but I didn't want to attach it to the mast.
Give it a try.
Christine

http://www.christinedemerchant.com/sailing.html

[Bill Perkins]

You say you have no downhaul? This at least can be fixed ,the luff does look slack . Just an eyebolt set a bit south of the Tack will work ,but this sets best if the mast is free to rotate slightly when coming about( speaking of a boomed rig ) . John Leather has a good book on the rig in which he shows the tack secured by passing a line around the mast ,under a thumb cleat set low on the front of the mast, and on around back to the tack .The luff can be tightened ,but the boom jaws are freer to rotate about the mast .

Yes ,booms improve performance ; why else would we put up with them ? Certain work boats had boomless rigs because the booms got in the way of the work . I don't agree with Culler's choice of the working rig for pleasure sailing . That's not typical of the pleasure boats from the age of sail ( Beachcomer-Alfa,ect.). I'm sure he could have tuned yours up for you though.

You add tension to the snotter as the wind rises . Slack off as it goes light . My Delaware Ducker points up well . Again a boomed sprit rig from the age of sail . Hull form comes into this too . I got to sail one of the smaller Good Little Skiffs and enjoyed it , but was astonished at how quickly she lost way when the sail luffed . She had to be sailed thru the wind ,not tacked quickly like a racing dingy . Once I got the hang of that I thought her windward performance was acceptable .

Your sail may need some alteration to lace to a boom . If you decide it's time for a new one instead I'll mention that my Ducker's sail is from Dabbler Sails , one outfit that can fix you up with a spritsail that will pull to windward .

[erster]

Being a complete novice at the fine art of sailing, i actually addressed your concerns and issues early on with my sprit rig. A small bow sprit would do wonders if from what the photo shows is the mast is pretty far foward for any sized jib.

Barring that, this is what you can do with the existing mainsail that can greatly improve upwind sailing. I would create a rope traveler across the transom which will stretch your sail better at the foot. This does create some issues with the rudder. Just make sure that you have it loosely fitted enough that you can steer with the boat off the wind. I also use the jib to help tack in a close hauled position, backwinding which is to holdthe jib after you begin your tack which allows the wind to turn the nose even better. Then let it go. This keeps the boat out of the irons in lighter winds too or in current conditons thats unfavorable to the moment.

Here are several shots detailing what is possible for you. If you go with a small jib, make sure that you use a wire luff keeping the jib from bellying overtime which you get also with just a rope luff.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Bateau1/P9150005.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Bateau1/spritsail.jpg
I do not use a traveler but use two blocks and a jam cleat which really stretches mine. But you do have some additional tension in heavey wind. But I just pop it up or relieve the main sheet a bit and adjust it letting it out of pulling it in a bit. this takes some getting use to as its not really a proper way to go. .
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Bateau1/threeyearanniversary-1.jpg


If your mast is further back than what it appears, use a setup as J Dillon has even using a metal rail piece fabricated to fit on the face of the stem to connect it to. His boat is also 18 feet, IIRC.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Bateau1/Carriannegetherjibwet9.jpg


The next thing that i would do if your spritpole is indeed far up the mast as in the photo posted, would to make a longer one that gets a more direct shot of stretching the gaft portion. If you have a reef point keep this in mind. Make sure that the main at the top of the halyard roller is a direct pull as close as possible to also keep the main tight. In some cases this is just not an option depending on how the mast is rigged. I used a slot through the top to allow the halyard to come through to the front which stretches it better.

I also use a bow sprit that allows me to use a fore stay and also use side stays which works well in keeping the mast from twisting or turing. This does require some additional setup for a smaller hull..
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Bateau1/popsiclesailsupwind.jpg


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Bateau1/DSC01763-1.jpg

[erster]

This is the best that I can do with the setup. YMMV with such a silly notion though.;):D
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v356/Bateau1/popsiclewingoverwing.jpg

[Lewisboats]

Try adding a sprit boom to your sprit sail... it did wonders for my little sailing rig and is easy to rig and use.

[James McMullen]

Maybe your sail isn't in good shape or wasn't cut correctly. . . . .
There aren't as many people around who know how to shape a four cornered sail these days. However, I think some of the problem may indeed be with the way you are holding the sail up in the air. I've had sprit rigs too, and have had mediocre performance with them compared to my current favorite small boat rig, the Balance Lug.

The many problems with the sprit rig are thrown into even sharper relief compared to the modern Balance Lug which is more handy and easier to set up, strike or reef underway, self-vanging, docile in a jibe, very tweak-able to optimise for different conditions or points of sail and when set correctly unbelievably weatherly for a sail with more or less the same shape and size as a sprit. I've had five different spritsail rigged boats myself. . . . .wouldn't use it again. Jibs and stayed masts are enormously less convenient than the unstayed rigs for actual sail & oar boats where you need to be able to get your rig up and down while out on the water. You might be able to change your rig to a lug with a little help from a sailmaker. Todd Bradshaw?

The centerboard on your Good Little Skiff may be part of the problem too. Does it have any shape to it at all, or is it just a flat board? An actual foil section centerboard will make any boat more weatherly.

[andrewjeffrieswebmail]

Hi folks - many thanks for your feedback. I'll consider installing a bow sprit, however I think a more fundamental consideration that from the feedback here has raised is with the snotter. Obviously, its role played on the sail is key. With my traditional sailing background, I'm used to the role the vang plays, its ability to adjust DOWNWARD tension on the sail and to either dump wind or to retain more if it. Seems that the snotter holds an inverse role, perhaps an UPWARD tension. I never thought of it in this way. Do I have this right? Seems that the snotter's ability to adjust tension on the upper edge of the sail is almost the same as what a typical sail laden with boom would exhibit.

Is this true?

Andrew

[Hwyl]

Is this true?

Andrew

Somewhat. It's my experience that the sail is almost two triangles, divided peak to tack. The snotter flattens the front triangle and a bit of the back. The sheet lead/traveller or boom flattens the back triangle.

Try that luff tension though (Cunningham in your language)

[Yeadon]

Hwyl has an interesting point that I haven't experimented with too much, but will.

Also, I think too much is made of windward performance. I think you get upwind faster by falling off the wind and in turn moving much quicker through the water, versus pounding your head against the windward wall while making very, very slow headway.

[erster]

Hi folks - many thanks for your feedback. I'll consider installing a bow sprit, however I think a more fundamental consideration that from the feedback here has raised is with the snotter. Obviously, its role played on the sail is key. With my traditional sailing background, I'm used to the role the vang plays, its ability to adjust DOWNWARD tension on the sail and to either dump wind or to retain more if it. Seems that the snotter holds an inverse role, perhaps an UPWARD tension. I never thought of it in this way. Do I have this right? Seems that the snotter's ability to adjust tension on the upper edge of the sail is almost the same as what a typical sail laden with boom would exhibit.

Is this true?

Andrew
The creases or crinkles in the sails thats pictured depicting your boat is the simular direction of the sprit pole. This will not change if you increase the tension on the pole with the snotter.

[erster]

Hwyl has an interesting point that I haven't experimented with too much, but will.

Also, I think too much is made of windward performance. I think you get upwind faster by falling off the wind and in turn moving much quicker through the water, versus pounding your head against the windward wall while making very, very slow headway.
Depends on where you are sailing, in an open bay or up a channel or approaching a conjested area, The worse sprit rig will point and will become a different boat using a jib if possible. But caution must be taken as not to over power the boat. I have two jibs now, one for lite winds and the lapper that makes the boat's handling superior to the measured one about fifty percent less. The sprit boom does increase the existing main performance but another obstacle in a small hull to deal with.

edited to add that if the sprit pole is too lite or thin, the pole will bend too but the creases will be at a right angle of the pole leading up to the peak. You do get some of this anyway in heavy wind or a loose snotter represented by the sail shot only in the above photos.

[andrewjeffrieswebmail]

Erster, you indirectly made a point to Yeadon that I would.... net is, if I had lots of open water to reach off the wind during the various tacks of a sail, then I'd be fine. No worries. However, much of my sailing is confined to the relatively small and narrow Falls Lake in Raleigh, NC, which is where I live. Its widest point is 1mile x 1mile... the remaining 22 miles of this lake are tight quarters, and not suitable for sailing. I do enjoy the periodic roadtrips to sail the broad and endless reaches of the Pamlico and Albemarle sounds of NC.....however those are a 3hr drive -- far more than the 10min drive to get on the water in the area lakes nearby my house. So, close points to the wind are the reality to my typical weekend sailing. I expect that many members among this group have broad saltwater sailing routes available to them -- I don't. Lake sailing is a reality, despite its short runs and haphazard winds. I love it, though, and appreciate the utilitarian design of my skiff moreso, given its ability to beach easily, douse sails easily, and allows my kids to confidently man the helm.

I do wonder if a sprit sprit would do the trick. I could design it as removable, and choose a jib not overwhelming.

Andrew

Andrew

[erster]

Erster, you indirectly made a point to Yeadon that I would.... net is, if I had lots of open water to reach off the wind during the various tacks of a sail, then I'd be fine. No worries. However, much of my sailing is confined to the relatively small and narrow Falls Lake in Raleigh, NC, which is where I live. Its widest point is 1mile x 1mile... the remaining 22 miles of this lake are tight quarters, and not suitable for sailing. I do enjoy the periodic roadtrips to sail the broad and endless reaches of the Pamlico and Albemarle sounds of NC.....however those are a 3hr drive -- far more than the 10min drive to get on the water in the area lakes nearby my house. So, close points to the wind are the reality to my typical weekend sailing. I expect that many members among this group have broad saltwater sailing routes available to them -- I don't. Lake sailing is a reality, despite its short runs and haphazard winds. I love it, though, and appreciate the utilitarian design of my skiff moreso, given its ability to beach easily, douse sails easily, and allows my kids to confidently man the helm.

I do wonder if a sprit sprit would do the trick. I could design it as removable, and choose a jib not overwhelming.

Andrew

Andrew
I learned a lot about the rig attempting to sail Taylors Creek in Beaufort from time to time. The current runs mid tide over three to four knots especially when the moon is full. If you combine that with the sw winds or even when it comes hard northeast, you had better be able to tack quickly and numerous times over, especially when you leave from the east end and head west. The creek is about 100 feet wide to about 300 feet wide with docks all along the way. If you also add the blocking of the winds by the tree line and homes , there is little room for any error. I appreciate what you are saying.

[andrewjeffrieswebmail]

By the way... in the photo of my boat posted in earlier this thread, I'd like to clarify that it is my wife at the helm, with a friend of hers. Not me. So, if there is a concern for the luft tension in that photo, then I'll blame it on her. : ) She's a salty sort, with far more years of sailing under her belt than the 13 yrs that I have. However, her "modus operandus" of sailing is to choose the most relaxing, quiet and peaceful point of sail, given wind conditions... and to follow it. I think that is among the many reasons I love her so much.

Andrew

[Hwyl]

Also, I think too much is made of windward performance. I think you get upwind faster by falling off the wind and in turn moving much quicker through the water, versus pounding your head against the windward wall while making very, very slow headway.

I've spent more than 40 years tying to figure that conundrum, and I've had the help of very fancy VMG computers and polar diagrams. The seat of my pants can still beat a computer, but my brain can't. I hope it remains a conundrum.

[dredbob]

I think the biggest problem is that you may be expecting too much in the way of windward performance. That's what the oars are for.

But, even without a boom, there are three primary adjustments for the spritsail, and you need to play around with them and learn what works best under varying conditions.

(1) Luff tension. Like any other sail the leading edge needs to be stretched tight. Even if the sail is laced on or tied to the mast with robands, you need some form of tack downhaul. A small multipart tackle is ideal.

(2) The snotter. The snotter should be adjustable both in angle (ie., how high up or down the mast) and in tension. For windward work it should be higher rather than lower and tight. This will stretch that top, sloping leading edge. Off the wind in light airs it can be a little looser.

(3) The sheet. A boomless spritsail should NOT have a traveller. What you need are a series (ideally, three or more) of thumb cleats along each rail aft, to be able to vary the angle of the sheeting. Think of the boomless spritsail more like a genoa and you need to find the optimal lead angle for the sheet in the same way, this is your center cleat, then add one or more forward and aft of this to give some range of adjustment.

One other string that some have used is a vang to the peak of the sprit. To windward this can be used to pull a little more tension into the top sloping leading edge. And it can really help tame the sail when running downwind, and maybe prevent the dreaded "death roll."

Bob

[slidercat]

I have to say that I've been very pleasantly surprised by how weatherly my little cat is with a sprit-sloop rig. This was really my first extensive experience with the rig, and even with a crappy home-made mainsail, windward performance has been very good. I'd have to say that no other boat I've owned has eaten up bigger chunks to windward. So the potential is there.

I have added a few elements to the traditional rig. My snotter is hung from a halyard that allows adjustment in height (and the halyard goes to the masthead, so the snotter can rotate easily around the mast.) The snotter has a multipart purchase, and this has turned out to be very important to getting a decent sail shape in varying conditions. There's a multipart downhaul, a boom vang, a clew outhaul, and a vang to the head of the sprit. That last is rarely used, since it's a bit of a pain to rig.

http://slidercat.com/blog/wordpress/wp-content/gallery/slider1/sailjul2.jpg

[lagspiller]

Here's your boat by the way
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3169/2936056749_880bddd5aa.jpg?v=0

You could clearly use some luff tension in that picture

I've sailed spritrig with the main loose-footed (only attached at the ends) on a boom and a jib. That gives you an outhaul to help control the shape of the. You have the halyard, and can have a downhaul to control tension along the mast. And then there is the snotter.

In this picture, the snotter is too tight for the conditions. The creases in the sail following the sprit boom are the give-away. It is important to adjust the sail to remove all the creases. That means in light winds, you should be sailing with little tension. Everything is too tight in the picture. If you get creases along the mast, it will either mean too tight or too loose... it is easy to see which it is.

I think for people used to more modern rigs, it takes some time getting used to adjusting the sails loose enough. With less ways of controlling the shape, you have to let the sail itself decide more what is correct than you are used to with modern rigs. There you force the sail to comply. Here you are forced to comply with the sail.

[Thorne]

Try cranking the sail tight along the mast first, use a regular downhaul or just a line tied to the tack of the sail.

Next rig up a simple sprit-boom. A good closet rod will do for testing, although the finished boom should be thinner, of course.

I found that spritbooms are great for keeping sail shape in various types of sails. And as above, get that mainsheet as far aft as you can, running it back to continue the straight line from the head to the clew.

Only if the above doesn't work consider adding a jib. Adding a small bowsprit and jib may fix your tacking issues, but if the boat was properly balanced before, will create a fair amount of lee helm.

Shop around at the used sail lofts like www.baconsails.com (http://www.baconsails.com) for deals on jibs, although eBay can also be a good source.

[Pernicious Atavist]

ADD A BOOM. I did and it improved the boat's performance immensely. It ran better, pointed higher, tacked more efficiently and gybed harmlessly. ADD A BOOM!

[Captain Blight]

I have read that given the same hull with different rigs, the sprit will out-pinch them all in a tacking duel. Cool, huh? Mind you this test was conducted some tens of years ago, so maybe results would be different with a modern flatheaded rig with a lot of roach like the Tornadoes use. Which is, after all, kind of a modificaion of the sprit shape. Hmmmm....

[lagspiller]

Come on. Look at the creases... they all follow the line of the sprit boom.
The obvious way of getting them out is by relaxing the snotter. That will allow the sprit to come down a bit and reduce the tension creating the creases.

[Todd Bradshaw]

If that photo is what we're going by, the obvious first step, before the sprit is even attached is to get adequate luff tension on the sail to pull out the wrinkles along the luff. You can't expect the sail to work adequately with the luff looking like that. You don't need to crank it as tight as possible, but get the wrinkles out. Adding more tension on the luff will defeat the luff curve, flattening the sail and moving its draft forward to some extent. This is something that you may want to try for upwind legs if you have a means to do it quickly and efficiently out on the water, but it is not the best option all the time. For most sailing all you want is enough tension to provide a smooth luff, which should generate the amount of draft and draft location that was designed into the sail.

Secondly, I'd like to see a substantially longer sprit. At that altitude and angle, it's tension is only affecting a small triangle up top (peak, to throat, to mast/sprit intersection) and the rest of the sail is pretty much just hanging loose below it. I'd like to see the sprit intersecting the mast at a point about level with the top of the sail's tack corner patches. The sprit will then be supporting more sail area, more evenly (the only area on the entite sail that's currently showing any tension is across the head, due to the current sprit angle, and there is so much up there that the entire top third or so of the sail is distorting). Moving the snotter down and lengthening the sprit will also make the sail brail easier and more effectively.

Once those points are covered, I think you will have both a much better (and better looking) airfoil and noticably improved performance. You can then experiment with small adjustments in halyard tension, snotter tension, sheeting angle and trimming to see what kinds of small performance gains might be possible on various points of sail. After that, you can start experimenting with the ideas of adding a boom or a jib, but given the current state of things, those additions are not what is causing your troubles and are not going to fix them.

[slidercat]

Captain Blight--

And that test was conducted with catamarans. You can reread it here:

http://slidercat.com/blog/wordpress/?page_id=57

My recent experience with the rig makes me think there might be something to it.

I'd echo the advice to fit a boom, though I'd go with a conventional boom with jaws rather than a sprit boom-- though the sprit boom is easier. If you don't have a rotating mast, a sprit boom will have a different tension depending on the tack. The boat in the picture appears to be running dead downwind, the worst point of sail for a boomless mainsail. A boomed sail would present a lot more area to the wind.

[slidercat]

Todd's right about the angle of the sprit. Another example of a too-short sprit can be found in the Optimist pram.

[lagspiller]

I'd agree, except that those wrinkles will also appear when the leading edge is tensioned too much for the conditions and the snotter is used to try to smooth the sail out. The only thing certain is that the spri is too tight. The rest of the problem is that the tension along the mast is either too little or too much. But it is the snotter that is the major issue. The sail would look a hell of a lot better if that was relaxed first. Look carefully - the smaller wrinkles running parallel to the top of the sail show there is way too much pressure there. Hard to say from a picture, but I still think the tension along the mast is ok. You'd know right away in real life. If I'm right, more tension along the mast will only make the wrinkles into folds. But less snotter will flatten them out no matter what is right or wrong along the mast.
Then you fine tune from there.

I don't have the experience to say yea or nea, but the comments about the length of the sprit boom sound correct.

[Todd Bradshaw]

There is no way in hell those luff wrinkles are being caused by too much luff tension. If you could even generate too much, it would gather the fabric into a vertical crease behind the mast, just as a cunningham will as it flattens a sail. Too much luff tension just won't make the sort of luff wrinkles that are clearly evident in the photo, no-way, no-how.

The snotter is too tight - but it's because it's at the wrong angle. If you ease the snotter, the head will start to sag and before long, you have more upper sail draft than you want (the opposite problem from what we're seeing here). If you're going to support, and evenly tension, a big square of fabric with one diagonal pole, it had better be set at the proper angle, which ain't happening here! The big creases running along the sprit are simply excess fabric being gathered from the middle of the sail. Other than robbing the sail of smoothness, power and draft, and being ugly, that portion of the cloth is in no danger. The head, on the other hand, is a different story. The panel seams within about 12"-18" of the head are being stressed more than they should ever be stressed and the area will eventually stretch out of shape and/or blow out the seams. This, again, is being caused by the sprit's angle being too shallow and it's tension being focused only on a small portion of the sail. Easing the snotter will reduce the tension across the head, but it's not going to make the rest of this sail set properly.

[rbgarr]

Todd,

Any advice for him about pointing better with a sprit rig or is it "a bootless enterprise"?:D

[Woxbox]

My two cents -- with a sprit rig, there's a change in attitude required. Your're not going to point real high. Don't even bother trying. But for the sail area, off the wind it will pull like a mule. Just trim to get the wrinkles out and watch her go.

[J. Dillon]

I guess it's the same with all boats but I think the sprit rig has a lot of quirks to teach one all the time. I added a jib many years ago ( thanks Todd) and it improved performance tremendously.

http://triton.imageshack.us/Himg124/scaled.php?server=124&filename=carriannesternviewqe5.jpg&xsize=578&ysize=480

Carrianne without jib

http://triton.imageshack.us/Himg338/scaled.php?server=338&filename=carriannesailing090208vt7.jpg&xsize=578&ysize=480

Carrianne with her jib

This year I tried a kick up rudder for the second time. It had problems like staying down as I had lines for getting it down with shock cord and another for hoisting it up. They did not work as envisioned so I replaced the rudder with the old one. BUT before I did that I noticed the boat seemed to point higher with the deeper rudder . I did not make a further positive determination. For next season I redesigned the rudder cutting off three inches and putting in weights to hold it down. Now I'm anxious to see if it indeed helps in pointing higher.

JD

[slidercat]

My two cents -- with a sprit rig, there's a change in attitude required. Your're not going to point real high. Don't even bother trying. But for the sail area, off the wind it will pull like a mule. Just trim to get the wrinkles out and watch her go.

I have to say that my experience has been decisively otherwise. Slider is not especially fast for a 16' cruising boat... except to windward. I've been very pleased with this aspect of the boat.

Maybe all my other boats have been unweatherly. But it didn't seem so at the time.

Of course, the limitation with sprit rig is the physical difficulty of handling a big sprit. I think it's only well-suited to small boats, despite the existence of Thames barges. On the other hand, I once heard a description of a Thames barge race as a "slow-motion ballet."

[Woxbox]

Ray -- I'd suggest that if you replaced that sprit rig with, say, a standard Hobie 16 rig, you'd feel like you were in a whole different boat.

I'm not suggesting this is a good idea, but the sprit rig is designed to be practical, not for all-out performance. I like the sprit rig, but like everything else, you have to appreciate what it's good for and what its limitations might be.

Your cat will be quick just because it's a cat -- light and stiff. You'll feel that with any rig. The sprit is pragmatic, but not the most weatherly rig you could use.

[slidercat]

Wox, a year ago I'd have agreed with you, but now I'm not so sure.

I imagine if you asked a hundred experts, a hundred of them would agree with you.

I imagine you're right about the Hobie 16 rig, but remember, I'd have an extra 78 square feet of sail area with the Hobie rig-- more than half again as much as I do now.

But still, it's hard to dismiss what you've seen with your own eyes, even if it flies in the face of expert opinion. I've owned a number of pretty good boats over the last 30 years, and none was as capable to windward as Slider. My first decent-sized cruising boat was a Wharram Tane-- not known as a whiz to windward, of course. But the previous owner had fitted a big modern fractional rig to the boat, and a worm shoe that gave the boat a couple extra inches of draft, and she did okay to windward-- and was much faster off the wind than Slider, because the old Wharram had a much better sa/d ratio. But to windward, my old Wharram didn't come close to doing as well as Slider does, even with her board up.

I see a lot of boats out on our local bay, and not many get to windward better. Part of that may be that Slider has no engine, so I get a lot more practice coaxing a boat upwind than many sailors, but that can't be the whole story. There are a lot of keen racers here, and on several occasions I've trailed along behind the Wednesday night racers from the yacht club, and not been ashamed.

For a specific example, last summer I sailed in company with a friend in a Sea Pearl tri-- again, not a boat known for sparkling performance, but on a par with Slider in terms of weight-to-power ratio. The Sea Pearl tri has a reasonably modern cat ketch rig. As I'd expect, on running and reaching courses, there wasn't a lot of difference in our speed, though in heavier air, I'd have probably had a substantial advantage, because of his beamy main hull. The great surprise was when we sailed to windward down the bay one morning. It was no contest. Slider was probably making twice as much ground to windward; within a few minutes the tri was so far behind us that it was hard to pick out against the shoreline. Our friend is an experienced sailor, so it wasn't due to incompetence on his part.

I can't explain it. But I can't ignore it either, so I've concluded that the rig has some serious potential, and not just as a cheap low-tech stand-in for a better rig.

Here's a hot-linked pic of a boat that appears to be planing with a sprit sloop rig:

http://www.duckworksbbs.com/plans/lillistone/phoenix/Tuesday.jpg

This is Ross Lillistone's Phoenix III, by the way. Nifty boat.

[lagspiller]

There is no way in hell those luff wrinkles are being caused by too much luff tension. If you could even generate too much, it would gather the fabric into a vertical crease behind the mast, just as a cunningham will as it flattens a sail. Too much luff tension just won't make the sort of luff wrinkles that are clearly evident in the photo, no-way, no-how.
<...>
Easing the snotter will reduce the tension across the head, but it's not going to make the rest of this sail set properly.
Not something worth arguing. I guess our experience is different.
It was my job to trim the main in the national championships on a similar spritrig a few years so I have some idea of what works and what doesn't. If we pull the snotter tight enough the sail actually folds over itself by centimeters in lines parallel to the spritboom.

A better point is that the guy in the boat should give the pointers a try and see what flies. It doesn't take much adjustment in practice to draw the correct conclusions for that particular rig.

In the Phonix picture above, it looks rather like the opposite case - too little tension on the snotter. The creases then go the other way. Could be other things, too, but I'd start there.

Our boats also sail the same hulls in a Bermuda class. Rigged that way, they were not any faster but did gain an advantage in pointing upwind. That translated to a few minutes faster over the finishline on an olympic triangle course. Noticable in a match race - probably not so very noticable otherwise. If your spritrig doesn't go well to windward, it might be the adjustment. But it might also be psychological... sometimes it actually does go better than you think.

[James McMullen]

I imagine if you asked a hundred experts, a hundred of them would agree with you.

Yeah! What do those stupid experts know anyways, huh? They think there so smart just because they have, like, all this knowledge and experience and stuff!


Slidercat, you're starting to sound like an unreasonable partisan these days. Anecdotes about how your boat seems to do just fine are not the way to establish proof that your sprit rig is better to windward than a standard multihull rig. If you really think your rig is superior and you wish to promote its adoption against the standard then you really ought to have some experience with and testing of the standard so you know exactly where you stand. Watching you argue with Todd Bradshaw about the preferred aerodynamics of sailrigs for multihulls is like listening to a priest give marital advice to newlyweds: you get the feeling that one of the parties has a much broader range of experience.

Listen, I have a favorite type of sail rig too that is less conventional, but at least I also have 24 years of experience sailing modern sloop-rigged boats too so I can realistically weigh the pros and cons of my beloved lugger. If you're going to argue with the experts in a field convincingly, then you're going to need to gain the education to become an expert yourself and then provide proof to back up your assertions.

If you still prefer your spritsail rig for one or another reason, that's fine, but you sound like a crank when you utterly dismiss the collected wisdom of people with much more experience than you. There's a chance that all of them might be wrong and you're right, but there's a better chance that you might learn something useful if you'll quit being so partisan and try to learn from their experiences too.

[erster]

Yeah! What do those stupid experts know anyways, huh? They think there so smart just because they have, like, all this knowledge and experience and stuff!


Slidercat, you're starting to sound like an unreasonable partisan these days. Anecdotes about how your boat seems to do just fine are not the way to establish proof that your sprit rig is better to windward than a standard multihull rig. If you really think your rig is superior and you wish to promote its adoption against the standard then you really ought to have some experience with and testing of the standard so you know exactly where you stand. Watching you argue with Todd Bradshaw about the preferred aerodynamics of sailrigs for multihulls is like listening to a priest give marital advice to newlyweds: you get the feeling that one of the parties has a much broader range of experience.

Listen, I have a favorite type of sail rig too that is less conventional, but at least I also have 24 years of experience sailing modern sloop-rigged boats too so I can realistically weigh the pros and cons of my beloved lugger. If you're going to argue with the experts in a field convincingly, then you're going to need to gain the education to become an expert yourself and then provide proof to back up your assertions.

If you still prefer your spritsail rig for one or another reason, that's fine, but you sound like a crank when you utterly dismiss the collected wisdom of people with much more experience than you. There's a chance that all of them might be wrong and you're right, but there's a better chance that you might learn something useful if you'll quit being so partisan and try to learn from their experiences too.

I think the question was how to make a sprit point better, not what folks thought about redesigning that boat to what folks thought was the best rig. Yes there are ways to make a sprit point better, even though sprit rigs are inferior to many folks that found them to be not to their likings for a number of reasons. It did not fit their butts or taste , kinda like pants or wimmin with a different hair color that their own girl friends had themselves.

This was an older thread that got bumped up. The photo with Ross Lingstone planing and the krinkle being right angle to the sprit pole is normally a result of the pole actually flexing when the winds are up a bit. You cannot built a thin pole that is managable that sticks up in the air that will not do that when winds that will make that boat sail at what appears to be a pretty good clip that will not do it no matter what the adjustment of any of the parts. Its just a fact of life, and rarely folks will stand up and adjust it accordingly either.

[Todd Bradshaw]

The wrinkles in the Phoenix sail seem to be mostly caused by the need for a bit more outhaul tension. The main is reefed, which can understandably sometimes not get everything tensioned exactly as desired. More outhaul tension would also remove some of the strain from those little diamond patches with the reef nettles passing through them, which are not a place you want to put much stress. More curious is the bloop in the leech, which could be another result of being reefed or possibly the need for a bit more hollow (there is no provision for broadseaming on a vertically-cut leech, so age can take it's toll on leech firmness and hollowing is the only real prevention/cure). It's also showing a major amount of headstay sag, one of the major reasons that I really like to see shrouds on sloops whenever possible. I'm not so sure that the boat is actually planing, as opposed to running over a wave, but it's moving along pretty well. Does this mean that the sprit sloop generates similar performance to what you might get with something like a LaserII or other Marconi sloop rig on the same hull? Of course not. A single photo of a single boat doesn't demonstrate or prove anything either way, but I'm sure the sailor is having fun.

Interesting cut on the bottom of the jib. Looks like the jib leech is nearly vertical and its foot is nearly horizontal on the sailplan, so the panel seams are just about level. They probably built a bit of curve into that split on the bottom panel and made it sort of a level broadseam, rather than taking the split down to the tack corner to shape the foot (most likely one of those "who cares" things for most people, but unusual and kind of interesting to a sailmaker).

[slidercat]

James, as it happens, I have 32 years of experience sailing modern sloop-rigged boats. Does that make my opinion better than yours?

No.

Here's what makes my opinion at least interesting to those who are able to understand that conventional wisdom may not be entirely complete and perfect: I own a boat that performs outside the parameters that conventional wisdom dictates. Of course, you are welcome to the opinion that I am naive, stupid, and/or lying, but there's a site full of pictures and videos and accounts of the boat that, in fairness, you should take a look at before you announce your conclusion.

A cat with a sprit sloop rig is hardly an innovation. Wharram's Hinemoa appeared 40 years ago with a rig very similar to Slider's. But Hinemoa was a typical Wharram design of the period, without boards or high-aspect rudders, and with the deep V hulls of that design series. Slider has high aspect rudders and daggerboard, and modified dory hulls with much less wetted surface than Wharram's, as well as less windage. It's hardly surprising that Slider's performance is better than Hinemoa's, and Hinemoa's was not bad. Thomas Firth Jones and his wife survived a hurricane at sea in their Hinemoa, while returning from Bermuda. I hope that Jones meets your requirement for expertise in the area of small multihull cruisers, as he was the best designer of micromultihulls for amateur construction to appear in the last 25 years, and wrote several seminal books on design. He saw nothing wrong with sprit rigs for fast boats, though like Woxbox and most other knowledgeable sailors, he felt that sprit rigs would usually not be quite as good as a modern Bermudan rig to windward. But he replaced his Hinemoa's rig with a conventional Bermudan rig for the last two years he owned her, and reported only an 8% improvement in daily runs. He believed that he could have gotten just as much improvement by fitting the original sprit rig with a boom.

I even posted a picture of another fast boat (much faster than Slider) with a sprit sloop rig. Presumably you would not tell Ross Liliistone that he is imagining the performance he gets out of Phoenix III? He is, after all, a more experienced designer than either you or Todd, or so I suppose.

Todd is a genuine expert in sails, I believe. In fact, in my capacity as book editor for Living Aboard magazine, I hoped his publisher would send me a review copy of his great-looking book, because my editor allows me a lot of latitude in choosing titles to review, as I've been working for her for many years now. However, I found his arguments unconvincing in this instance. First, he told me that there were no good reasons for a multihull to use a sprit rig, because the sail's shape could not be adequately controlled at high speeds. Then it eventuated that he'd built a sprit sail for a multihull. When I pointed out this inconsistency, he came up with a whole raft of reasons why, in this particular instance, he had not made an unacceptable choice. Hmmm.

He cheerfully admitted that he had no sympathy for or understanding of Slider's design goals. He made the rather malicious assertion that I had been wrong to offer plans for an untested and unproven design, when it would have taken him only a few minutes to visit Slider's site and discover that I've been sailing Slider for 8 months now, over hundreds of sea miles in all conditions up to 30 knots. I doubt that he's pleased with you for bringing the matter up again, particularly as I fully supported his analysis of what is wrong with the rig that started this thread.

I found his arguments re Slider unconvincing, since they boiled down to: "you are too ignorant to understand why I am right and you are wrong." It's been my experience that experts who are really in command of their material can explain it to laymen in terms the laymen can understand, if the experts care to do so.

I have to say that your remarks reminded me of much of the stuff I had to listen to during the couple of years I spent designing Slider. As a novice designer, I sought the advice of many experts and sailors, online and in private correspondence. The real experts were usually encouraging, as they were curious to see if a boat like Slider was actually practical, since it was someone else's time and money at risk, and a real expert is as willing to learn from failure as from success.

The self-proclaimed "experts" were not encouraging, in general, and eventually would say something like "If your idea is so good, why hasn't some professional designer already drawn a boat like that?" (I should reiterate here that Slider's unique aspects have nothing to do with her rig.) I must confess that the sheer blatant stupidity of that attitude was of great use to me in motivating me to actually build Slider.

Every time I go online, I run across some idiot who is saying something dumb. I don't think it's my duty to correct every idiot and fool on the internet. I usually ignore them. If, on the other hand, my ideas are attacked, I try to defend them, in as civil a manner as I can. I don't think there's anything wrong with this, and if someone decides to take my disagreement personally, that's his problem, not mine.

Finally, if you are a fair man, I think a comparison of our posts should be instructive. Mine consist of anecdotes, facts, figures, and actual examples of the rig I chose for Slider. Yours consists of advice to sit down, shut up, and listen to my betters. Frankly, were I an unbiased observer, I think I would find my posts more interesting and stimulating.

In that spirit, here's another pic of Ross's elegant and speedy little boat, making good progress closehauled:

http://www.duckworksbbs.com/plans/lillistone/phoenix/image007.jpg

You can find out more about Ross's boat here:

http://www.duckworksbbs.com/plans/lillistone/phoenix/index.htm

He discusses his choice of rig in terms even non-experts like me can comprehend, in this and other articles for Duckworks.

[Todd Bradshaw]

Ray, are you actually going to start this crap again? Don't you have anything better to do? I have no idea how much experience Ross Lillistone has, and frankly don't care. If that's him in the boat above, all I said is that he needs to learn how to tie-in a reef properly to get better performance out of, and preserve the life of, his sails - which is clearly obvious in the photo and a conclusion that you would be able to make yourself by looking at it if you actually knew half as much as you think you know.

"First, he told me that there were no good reasons for a multihull to use a sprit rig, because the sail's shape could not be adequately controlled at high speeds."

Yes, I did, and it's true. You can ask anyone from the kid on a Hobie 14 all the way up to the skipper of a Formula 40. If you want something more technical, check the article by Jim Grant (Sailrite's founder) which I suggested you read last time on high-speed sails, or the Marchaj pages that it is based on referenced in it. You simply choose to ignore this because it doesn't support your views.

"Then it eventuated that he'd built a sprit sail for a multihull."

You mean after you told the world that I had no experience whatsoever with sprit-rigs on multis and nothing to base any of my conclusions on? Looks like you were wrong again, but you seem to have left that part out of your latest post. Turns out that I have at least as much experience sprit-rigging multihulls as you do and in my case, I did it with a real sail.

"Then it eventuated that he'd built a sprit sail for a multihull. When I pointed out this inconsistency, he came up with a whole raft of reasons why, in this particular instance, he had not made an unacceptable choice. Hmmm."

And, as I pointed out at least twice in that post and then again, later on in the thread, the customer who was paying me money to design the rig and build the sail (who sails on Lake Superior, by the way) was adamant about incorporating the fastest possible means of dousing the sail for safety reasons and that is a brail - and that means a sprit rig. It was one of his primary concerns and one of the main reasons we went with a sprit over three or four other possibilities -lug, bat-wing, lateen, etc. (personally, I would have liked to see it with a claw, but since neither of us had ever used one or really knew what to expect with one in terms of sail handling, it didn't seem like a very wise choice). The sprit was chosen because we thought it would do these things and perform adequately, not because we had any delusions that it would out-perform the other possible rigs. I don't know what about all this would possibly make you go "Hmmmmm" or what you can't understand about the choice, but the only way it is, in any way, a statement supporting your views is if you selectively leave out parts of it and distort the rest. Had the customer come to me and asked for the best performing rig for his mini-tri, I would have sold him a reasonably high-aspect, big-roached, fully battened Marconi, where the sailshape and entry angle could be carefully tailored and maintained through fast acceleration and deceleration and rapid changes in the aparent wind, because that's what has been shown to clearly provide the most bang for the buck.

This sort of omission and assumption is standard procedure for you, and I would request that you stop "quoting" me or trying to explain to anyone what I said or meant, because you lack both the technical knowledge and the discretion to do so accurately. As most people here know, I'm pretty outspoken and I don't need anyone explaining my positions for me. The fact that you drop the names of a whole bunch of famous sailors or designers or post a lot of pictures of sprit-rigged boats does not mean in any way that these people or pictures support your theories or even are aware of your boat in the first place. I have a couple of Paul McCartney albums. I think he's a great songwriter. That doesn't mean that he thinks I'm one, too.

There was nothing malicious at all about my complaint that you are selling plans for an untested boat. I have read your website and it did nothing to change my mind. You have no professional reputation as a successful designer and your boat has only been sailed by you with a polytarp sail for eight months. You claim that you have sailed in 30 knots of wind, yet you also claim that your multihull has only turned out 7-8 knots of boatspeed. When asked why you haven't pushed it to find out what limits it might have, you claim that you don't because you have $1,000 worth of cameras on board. If two high-school kids come up with $80 to buy a set of plans, cobble one together and happen to take it out in 25 knots of wind and 4' surf, do you think they will be as conservative? I don't, and though you can't be held responsible for some one else's bad judgement, I personally believe you owe the public more rigorous testing and need to get a lot closer to those limits before you start selling plans for money. That is my opinion and it's not going to change, no matter how you justify what you are doing, or how many photos of sprit-rigged monohulls with sloppy reefs you post. You are free to have your own opinion. At this point, I am officially done talking about Slidercat for good. I think I have made my views on the boat more than clear to anyone who cares to read them carefully, so please leave me out of your posts in the future.

[Ben Fuller]

This thread was kind of interesting until it got into flaming and overlong posts.

Be that as it may, with my 13'6" Good Little Skiff, I spent time tweaking the rig as all suggest. Real down haul tension, the angle of the sprit (I think it ends up bisecting the peak angle) Sheet to the quarters. And some gear designed for reefing. I think this stuff got drawn up by Kathy Bray some years ago for WoodenBoat. About 75 feet as I recall.

I got mine to point "better" by looking at the bit that sticks into the water. Remarkable what a little foil shape to the center board does.

With my short skiff I generally sail it without a rudder in smooth water. She steers just fine with body weight, even tacks. I have a big sculling oar that I can use when needed.

Many of the old working designs had jibs: am thinking about the fore and aft rigs for Norwegian boats and even fishing dories. The caveat is that if they are of any size you need shrouds to keep the luff reasonable.

Its always tradeoffs.

[Driver Mark]

This was a very interesting and informative thread right up until it became a re-hash of a couple other threads.
Ray... we got the message you reeeeeeeeally like your boat.
Todd... thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience.



Now, is there anyone out there that can further enlighten us newbies with sprit rigged boats?

[Ben Fuller]

Mark,

This is the reference to the article I did some years back for WB. It has some useful stuff in it I think.

"Managing the Spritsail: From Simplicity to Performance," 165:80

[slidercat]

So you see no inconsistency between first saying there were no good reasons to rig a multihull with a sprit and then later saying, wait, when I did it, I had good reasons? Okay!

That you find Thomas Firth Jones' highly-regarded views irrelevant to the discussion is another indication that however much you know about building sails, your knowledge of small multihull design is severely limited.

I believe you owe me an apology for claiming that my boat was insufficiently tested, though I don't plan to hold my breath, since you do not appear to be a gracious person. There are literally thousands of plans available for which prototypes have not even been built, let alone tested over months and hundreds of miles in all weathers, and many of these designs are from designers with no more formal training than I have-- and less sailing experience. You'd better get busy screeching self-righteously at those guys too, if you want to be consistent. Maybe it can be your own little crusade.

Unfortunately, your view, if widely adopted, would mean that progress in small boat design would be severely hampered. In fact, your view, if carried to its logical end, would prevent any designer not trained as a naval architect and certified by some official body, from ever selling a design. If retroactively enacted, you would have few sails to build, since most small boats are either adaptations of traditional craft built by anonymous craftsmen or by designers who were not trained as naval architects. This is particularly the case in the field of small multihull design for the amateur builder. Your elaborations on this theme have become increasingly nonsensical. In exactly what way does her crappy polytarp mainsail make Slider less tested than a boat with a better sail? After all, with a better sail, her performance should only improve. Since all cats can be capsized, what exactly was the point of your scenario involving incautious sailors? That's right, Todd. There was no point at all. Slider's scantlings are taken directly from a larger, heavier boat with a bigger rig. In other words, she is overbuilt. That makes her slower, but safer. In what universe is this irresponsible?

By the way, contrary to your supposedly expert opinion, brailing is not the fastest way to get sail off a boat. A junk rig is very much faster, since it requires only a halyard to be cast off, nothing to be hauled on, and does not leave an untidy wad of fabric at the top of the mast, which can be problematic in a sudden squall, especially for a small multihull with its limited stability. Evidently you gave your client inept advice.

I certainly hope you are done talking about Slider, since your increasingly hysterical fact-free flailing has shed little light on the question of whether sprit rig is suitable for modestly-rigged small cruising cats-- though apparently it's okay when you do it. You have accomplished nothing beyond convincing me that I would never recommend you as a sailmaker to anyone. A person who would so viciously attack a stranger on the internet for simply disagreeing politely with him is probably a very poor person to do business with.

[slidercat]

Many of the old working designs had jibs: am thinking about the fore and aft rigs for Norwegian boats and even fishing dories. The caveat is that if they are of any size you need shrouds to keep the luff reasonable.

Its always tradeoffs.

That's certainly true. Slider has shrouds, though that was originally done because there isn't any other way to get a mast to stand up out on the forebeam of an open cat, without adding a lot of weight.

Ross mentions in one of his Phoenix articles on Duckworks that close-hauled, the downward pull of the mainsheet tensions the forestay, as the sprit acts as a kind of gin pole to transmit the force to the masthead, via the leech and head of the sail. I've observed this forestay tensioning effect too.

I've often wondered if a sprit might be arranged to flatten the mainsail in the puffs, using a simple three wire rig to the masthead, as in Slider. It seems to me that the thrust of the sprit might be used to bend the mast forward a little where it attaches to the mast. This would probably only be practical if the sail were not high peaked and had a relatively low aspect ratio, so the sprit could connect higher on the mast rather than at the bottom. It wouldn't take much of a bend to yield a significant flattening effect, and the advantage would be that the bend was continuously self-adjusting, unlike high-tech rigs that use mast bend which has to be cranked into the rig. The sprit might need to be a lot stiffer than most actually are, to transfer the thrust to the mast. I know Slider's sprit isn't stiff enough; it bends in the puffs, which yields the opposite of what you'd want. Anyone got a 15' carbon fiber pole they don't know what to do with?

[MiddleAgesMan]

There are prima donnas everywhere you go...

Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em...

[Ben Fuller]

Mainsheets do some fore stay tensioning but you need to talk much higher loads than we are playing with here. In international canoes we routinely use 4 x 1 to both bend the mast and tension the forestay; then there is vang sheeting. By looking at body weight and playing with spreader length and position we manage to create rigs that are automatically bleed off excess air but none of this will happen in low tech land. Even in dories shrouds help, simple rope and toggle. Same thing for Norse boats.

And if you want to drop the sail ultimately in a hurry nothing beats a lug or square sail with a proper rakke, which is the Scandinavian non binding yard parrel system.

[erster]

There are prima donnas everywhere you go...

Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em...

There is some differences here. Everyone is free to step up to the plate and provide any and all supporting evidence each day that supports their own comments. One thing is for sure. In numerous cases here, including my own, ever single morsel and granule has been earned and can be supported by working objects and I make no excuses for mine when pressed.:cool:

[lagspiller]

http://www.oselvarlaget.no/images/stories/regatta.jpg
A nice shot of one of the local boats showing a well trimmed sail.

http://194.19.60.40/~asf/2008/Austevollregatta/slides/Bilde4.jpg
This boat is one of the regular top qualifiers.

http://194.19.60.40/~asf/2006/Moeksterfjorden/slides/sailing%20001.jpg
This shot shows an unusual feature for this rig - the jib & forstay are attached to a boom that pivots from the mast. In a following wind, the crew releases the downhaul (in the bow) and swings the foot of the jib outboard. The jib is then set so it slips some of the air off the luff... in effect tuning the jib as if the sail was more or less on a beam reach. This generates a bit more downwind speed.

Photos linked from the local club albums.
http://194.19.60.40/~asf/index.html

[Bill Perkins]

Andrew ; here's Mr. Culler's sail plan for the skiff . The sprit is just a few inches shorter that the total length of the mast .Is this setup still what you've got ?
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3098/3087559880_28d7ac0f85_m.jpg

[slidercat]

Lagspiller, those are some serious-looking sails.

Often when we discuss the merits of ancient rigs like sprit, we're discussing the rigs as they were a hundred years ago. Of course it's pure speculation in most cases to try to discuss the rigs as they might be if only they had not been dismissed as superseded technology, but now and then someone points out that the development of these rigs has not necessarily reached its peak. The sails in lagspiller's photo, with their radial panels and maybe battens(?) show what can be done if you can find sailmakers to take the challenge seriously. If you compare them to the old-fashioned vertical paneled sails shown in several pictures up the thread-- they look like a completely different order of sailmaking.

Once, when I was describing my system for adjusting the height of the snotter hanger, using a masthead halyard on a forum devoted to open boat cruising, I was severely chastised by a gentleman who thought it very unlikely that I'd come up with something that millions of working watermen who had spent their lives working with the rigs had missed. There's a lot of truth to that viewpoint, but those long-dead watermen, who I'm sure did know their rigs more intimately than I ever will, did not have access to non-stretch Dyneema cordage.

And they didn't have access to Mylar, either.

[Bill Perkins]

Ray; check out the " Staander " on this big traditional Dutch rig ( a tackle suporting the foot of the sprit with the fall led down to the deck ). From John Leather's " Spritsails and Lugsails ". A great book .


http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3226/3087087249_90bc05ee04.jpg

[lagspiller]

Yes, there is some lack of understanding between the traditionalists and the competition sailors.

The sails on these boats are cutting edge in fabric and methods. All the adjustments thinkable are there, plus a few the crews add themselves. It is kind of a ritual of trying things out and keeping your last go-fast idea from the rest until the last second. Very competitive. I remember well when the line from the boom to sprit (seen clearly on boat 150) turned up on the first time - and did well in the race. Psyced everyone out, so by the the second race day started, half the fleet had installed the line. It is supposed to give some extra control over twist and sail depth.
These guys change their sails pretty often.

The hulls are a different matter. Some of the boats in the pictures are 100 years old.
I'm don't have the slighest problem with traditional sails or ones like these. I personally like the looks of the old sails - but if performance is important, you go with what performs best. Like I said, these go almost as well around an olympic course as the same hulls with a tall marconi rig... and those are a little bigger in area. In the last national championships, the difference was something like 6 minutes on a 6-7 km triangle course. Seems reasonable that they would be even closer if they had exactly the same sail area.
I'm not sure, but I know the sprit rigs don't point quite as high - so they must make up some of the time running off the wind. Maybe because of the trick with the jib.

[slidercat]

Bill, that is a great book. Do you know what the Staander was made of? I know that some of the gear on a Thames barge is chain, because the loads are so great that cordage couldn't handle them.

I've only seen that book via interlibrary loan, and there was so much knowledge there that I could only absorb a small amount of it before I had to return it. But I think that was the same book that detailed a rig used by watermen who provided services to the shipping in English ports. The rig had a small lug mizzen. The boom of the mizzen stuck out forward of the mast, and was linked directly to the tiller. When the tiller was put down to tack, the mizzen helped sheer the boat quickly around onto the new course. When I was designing Slider, I was very concerned that she tack quickly and positively, and slowness in stays is a general drawback with cats. I figured that if she didn't tack well, I might try a similar device. It's funny all the stuff you worry about when you don't really know what you're doing.

Lagspiller, do you know the area of that rig you posted pictures of? If it's anywhere close to 140 sq. ft. (13 square meters) for main and jib, or 105 sq. ft (10 sq. meters) for just the main. I'd sure love to get my hands on a used set-- maybe one that was a season too old for racing. I doubt I could afford a new sail built to that standard, especially with the current sad state of the dollar.

It's an interesting point about the ancient hulls paired with high-tech sails. It just doesn't go the other way, it seems. Anyone who's built a racing multihull would be very unlikely to rig it with anything less than the latest and greatest technology-- too much money at risk. And even less expensive cruising multis don't get older technology, unless designed by an iconoclast like Wharram. Bob Beggs did very well in the OSTAR in a 26 foot Wharram cat with a gaff main, and Bernd Kohler has had very good results from a vanged gaff mainsail on his cruising cats, so it isn't hopeless.

The line to the sprit for controlling twist was used with the sprit in the comparative rig test Todd and I were arguing about in another thread. It's probably even more effective on a boat with the beam of a cat, because you can get a lot of sideways pull on the line without much downward pull-- on Slider I use only a light line with a fairlead and clam cleat on each quarter. I usually don't use it, unless I'm trying to pass some expensive boat while cruising-- I don't race.

By the way, if anyone would like to look at the test, I archived it on Slider's site:

http://slidercat.com/blog/wordpress/?page_id=57

You have to click on the link to the image,and then when the thumbnail image appears, you have to click again to get the full-sized image. I wish it were more convenient, but I just haven't had the time to convert it to HTML. Fair warning: the test concluded that sprit rig was 30% faster to windward than the somewhat low-aspect masthead Bermudan it was sailed against, and this result seems to irritate a lot of folks.

[Todd Bradshaw]

Those are cool sails. I can't say that the mix of old hull and new rig thrills me, but that's the way these things sometimes happen and it can make for interesting examples of how to push class rules to the extreme. We see the same thing on some of the big old stern-steering iceboats around here. Many of them have been actively sailing and racing for better than 100 years and over that time, small changes have been made, bit by bit - until now you have a main hull that's essentially carved from a log in 1900, and it's currently fitted with a composite spar and high-aspect Kevlar sails. They've certainly lost the looks of the old cotton-sailed gaffers, but the people sailing them don't worry about looks, their goal is to win.

Some of the fairly unconventional, boomed jib systems are quite interesting and some are also self-vanging, which can be very nice off the wind. Notice how they've added roached leeches. That's why the battens are there (they would need to be whether the sails were mylar/scrim laminates, Dacron or even cotton, simply due to the roach). The biggest problem in building a set for a sailmaker is finding a customer willing to spend a couple grand on a spritsail and a jib that will have a fairly short competetive lifespan.

[Jon Agne]

Andrew ; here's Mr. Culler's sail plan for the skiff . The sprit is just a few inches shorter that the total length of the mast .Is this setup still what you've got ?
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3098/3087559880_28d7ac0f85_m.jpg

Hi Bill,

Is there any way to get a more detailed look at that Culler sail plan. A friend of mine has this exact boat and he has been fiddling with the rig for three years and can't seem to get it quite right.

Jon

[Bill Perkins]

Mystic Seaport sells copies of the boats' plans at their original scale ( there's a website ) . The one sheet drawing ,at reduced scale , is on page 56 of John Burke's book "Pete Culler's Boats" . The page number in this book is how Mystic has been cataloging Culler's plans .

I see from reading that book that the 18.5 footer was arived at by elongating the 13.5 ft. boat ,keeping the beam the same . So she has the smallest beam /length ratio of the GLS series . Maybe that has made the correct sheeting of the loose footed sail problematic on these boats ? In profile the proportion of the sails to their hulls is similar , but the sheeting angle available for the bigger sail on the longer boat is significantly less . Burke suggests experimenting with a 2 sail rig on the boat ,and shows a photo of one so rigged .

[lagspiller]

Here is a snip from the class rules.




Klasse Beskrivelse Seilareal


A

Seksæringer med inntil 25 m2 seilareal


B


" “ 20 " "


D


Seksæringer/færinger “ 17 " "


E


" " “ 15 " "


H


Færinger “ 13 " "


K


" “ 10 " "


L


" “ 8 " "


Spriseil


" “ 8 " "

Klassene A - B - D - E - H - K og L benytter


Bermudarigg, men kan også rigges med lugger eller

gaffelrigg. Spriseilklassen benytter kun


spriseilrigg.
Norgesmesterskap kan arrangeres i klassene: E - K - L og Spriseil.



The boats in the pictures are all 8 sq.meter sprit. That is the most popular class. Few boats compete in the other classes, so there will not be many used sails to find larger than 8 m2.




MAKSIMUM TILLATT SEILAREAL
Klasse


Areal i fokken kvm HOVEDSEILAREAL ( fokk + storseil ) kvm Areal i buen i storseilets akterkant kvm Totalt kvm





A

- 25,0 2,5 27,5

B


- 20,0 2,0 22,0

D


- 17,0 1,7 18,7

E


- 15,0 1,5 16,5

H


- 13,0 1,3 14,3

K


- 10,0 1,0 11,0

L


- 8,0 0,8 8,8
Spriseil 2,40 8,0 0,4 8,4


The reason sprit class has one number more than the other classes is that the jibs in other classes don't have a stipulated maximum. The smallest number is the amount of sail area behind a direct line from top to bottom of the main sail. So the numbers represent - measured sail area jib & main, area outside the directline in mainsail, total sail area jib and main.


The sailmakers here have all the numbers and can run off a new set anytime. With such small production runs, it doesn't really effect the price how many they make.

http://mildebatlag.org/oselvarklubben/Klasseregler_Oselvar-28nov2000.pdf
The class rules, if you are interested. Unfortunately in norwegian. But words like mast, breidde (bredth), lengde (length) and the formulas are probably understandible to guy used to reading class rules.

[Jon Agne]

Thanks. I have that book, and should have known to look there first.

Best,

Jon