One for Todd Bradshaw

[Dick Millet]

Todd, thought you might like to see what your book has wrought. Forgive the sail, it's a low budget test of my sewing ability (it's lacking), the capabilities of my sewing machine (good enough) and whether a guideboat can sail at all (remains to be seen). I promise to put a nice traditional narrow panelled sail on it as soon as I find out just how well the boat handles with that stick way up there in the air.

http://mysite.verizon.net/rmillet/Sailing.html

Dick

[Todd Bradshaw]

I like it! It actually looks a lot more like it's supposed to be there than I thought it would back in the concept phase. It will be very interesting to find out how it works. Don't forget that PFD...just in case.

[Ian McColgin]

I like it. This is in the tradition of good working sail. Whaleboats had it as well. The sail is to rest the oarsmen (or paddlers in this case) on anything reasonably off the wind. You'll still find it more efficient to paddle if the goal is to weather but this will really let you coast if the wind is off your back.

I've done some runs down in the Allagash area where we resorted to standing arms outstreached with ponchoes clewed to the gunnels to get a far lesser effect.

This will be fun and very practical if you go a-vouyaging.

[brian.cunningham]

http://media5.hypernet.com/ubb/icons/icon14.gif

[Wayne Jeffers]

Originally posted by Ian McColgin:
I've done some runs down in the Allagash area where we resorted to standing arms outstreached with ponchoes clewed to the gunnels to get a far lesser effect.
An easily driven boat needs little sail to move her downwind.

A few years ago, I was standing in my little flat-bottomed rowing skiff fishing (don't try this at home!) with a modest breeze from astern. After a few moments, I noticed that I was "sailing" fast enough to leave a pretty impressive wake. :eek:

Your sail should work very nicely. Well done!

Wayne

[Bill Perkins]

Looks like fun Dick , nice boat ! You might enjoy rigging a topping lift .In simplest form this would be a length of 1/8th in. braided parachute cord leading from the end of the boom ,up through the hole in your masthead ,down to a turning block at the base of the mast ,and back to a cleat near at hand about amidships .With the sheet slack ,pull on this till the boom is topped up parallel and tight to the mast and you can depower the sail in a hurry if the boat is overpowered .

Better yet is a lift that also functions as a brail . This is about what I have on my boat and is just slightly more elaborate . I can't quite make it out in the photo ,but let's assume there are grommets in the sail where it's fastened to the mast . Tie a bullet block on the end of a piece of line . Thread the line through the first grommet down from the sail's head until the block stops against the grommet .Lead down and through a bee block or fairlead placed on the bottom of the boom .The fairlead is placed an inch or so closer to the boom /mast connection than is the aforementioned block . Lead up to the block , down to a turning block at the base of the mast and back to your hand .

When you pull on this setup , because the lift encircles the sail and boom the sail will be bundled tight as the boom is topped up tight to the mast . Topping the boom right up also clears the cockpit up for paddling .This would be handy when leaving or returning to a constricted launch site , not just when overpowered . Bill

[ 07-29-2004, 05:04 PM: Message edited by: Bill Perkins ]

[imported_Steven Bauer]

This is all I got. :(

"Locked
The requested resource is currently locked. The lock must be released or proper identification given before the method can be applied"

[Dick Millet]

Steven,

Give it another try. I've been having that problem on and off all week. I do this sort of stuff for a living, unfortunately not on Verizon's servers. I'd be unbelievably embarrassed if this sort of error showed up on a server I was responsible for. Especially considering the size of the target audience. I'll get it sorted out with Verizon as soon as I can.

Thanks,

Dick

[Leon m]

Very nice looking rig Dick :cool:

I got to ask a rookie question though...
the way you have your mainsheet rigged looks
odd to me. Wouldn't you have more leverage in a
stiff wind if the mainsheet was fed through a
block about midway on the boom.

I'm no expert by any means...but having the
mainsheet feed down way up by the mast just seems
like it would take more effort to sheet in :confused:

[imported_Steven Bauer]

I see them now, nice. That's going to be a fun ride! :D

Steven

[Dick Millet]

Leon,

You may not be an expert, but I'm a total greenhorn. This is the first boat I've ever sailed.

I carefully looked over everything in Todd's book (at least 20 times), and that mainsheet configuration was what I came up with. Serves the dual purpose of boom vang and main sheet and so far seems to work pretty well. I can't really say how it's going to work in heavy winds as we've been becalmed around here over the last several days (if I wanted calm weather it'd be blowing every day).

The first time I took it out on Friday evening I had maybe 1/2 an hour of 10 mile an hour winds and it was a pretty fun ride. Controlling the sail was pretty effortless, but I learned that paddle steering just isn't going to cut it. I put together a little rudder that fits right in the rear oar lock and tested it out on Sunday. Much better but not responsive enough so I built this today:

http://mysite.verizon.net/rmillet/leerudder.JPG

Now if only we can get a little wind around here to try it out.

Dick

[Leon m]

Originally posted by Dick Millet:
Leon,



I carefully looked over everything in Todd's book
Oops...had I known Todd had said... redface.gif

I just took a look at his book and he explains
the reason he recomends that rigging is to keep
the boom from bending in the middle and flatening
the sail.

Good thing he wrote that book ... so he doesn't
have to waste his time setting me straight. ;) :D

[Todd Bradshaw]

It's actually more important and effective in creating downhaul tension on the luff than as a vang (though it will vang to a certain extent). In high winds or when sailing to weather it tensions the luff, flattening the sail for a better upwind sailshape on a beat or to depower when sailing in a blow. Off the wind, or at times when less mainsheet tension is needed the downhaul force is lessened and the sail can be somewhat fuller.

Simple as it is, it's effective enough that about 90 percent of modern iceboats use such a system. Since those guys are essentially always sailing "upwind" due to boatspeed making drastic windward shifts in the aparent wind direction, they really want flat sails and the ability to create massive amounts of luff tension at times.

It's also true that mid-boom sheeting on boats with light, skinny spars tends to bend the boom excessively. On sails with the foot laced to the boom, this tends to use-up the sail's foot round allowance before it gets a chance to create the designed draft in the bottom of the sail. You may wind-up sailing most of the time with the lower half of your sail flatter than desired, and losing performance. On a loose-footed sail, the effect of excessive boom bend is just the reverse. The bending actually moves the tack fitting (or jaws or gooseneck) closer to the outhaul fitting on the boom. This magnifies any draft designed into the sail as it's chord measurement (amount of camber) gets deeper. At a certain point, you cease having a sail designed with the proper draft for that type of boat as the deep draft generates wave-punching power but not as much boatspeed. Your sleek, narrow, easily-driven hull is now being powered by a sail that would work better on a stubbier, beamier hull, like a catboat, which needs some punching power.

In addition, boom bend is never constant. The amount of mainsheet tension-induced bend changes with every puff or every time you trim-in or ease-out the mainsheet. This is not a good formula for consistent performance as there are already plenty of variables to deal with every time you go sailing.

By far, the absolute hardest part of my job designing and building small boat and canoe sails is dealing with mast, yard and boom bend. All the other sail shaping calculations- draft amount, draft placement, etc. and how to create them are relatively simple. Bend, on the other hand, and allowing for it, has to be an estimate based on a few crude measurements when available and a lot of gut feeling. Since we can't completely prevent bend, most sails are going to work better in some conditions than in others. Anything that can be done in the rigging process which can allow sail control with as little exageration of the bendy nature of light spars is generally worth doing. Avoiding mid-boom sheeting on small boats is usually near the top of the list.

[Leon m]

I knew I was gunna get schooled. ;)

Thanks Todd Sincerely .

So what do you recomend for my lateen rigged
Sharpie ?

[Todd Bradshaw]

Probably a rope traveler/bridal thingy, crosswise over the tiller, with the aft end of the sheet deadened to a block which rides side-to-side along the bridle. The sheet then leads up to a block fairly far aft on the boom, then forward through a fairlead mid-boom, underside (helps keep the sheet from hanging down and catching on you when tacking) and then to the forward boom block, near the mast. You can just let it hang there off the block and hand-hold it, but it's tiring in high winds and the more the wind pressure increases, the more sheet tension is trying to lift you out of the boat - which I really dislike, even on boats as small as a Sunfish.

A better system is to lead the sheet down from the forward boom block and through a block on the lower mast or partners at deck level (slightly forward of the boom block if possible, so that tension pushes the jaws or gooseneck ring up against the back of the mast) and back to the skipper. The addition of this lower block means that the harder you have to pull the sheet in heavy air, the more that tension is pulling you down into the boat, rather than lifting you out of it.

It's a good location for a rachet block if you're so inclined as it makes the sheet easier to hand-hold in high winds. At that point you have options. You can mount a couple clam or cam-cleats on the side decks, next to your sitting position and in-line with the sheet coming from the mast base, or route the sheet straight back to another swiveling block mounted along the keel line (on the daggerboard well, centerboard trunk or even sometimes on the floor) to turn it off 90 degrees toward the side decks and a couple of cleats. In that type of situation, the block at the partners would just be a regular block and the rachet would be moved to the keel-line block position. This keeps the rachet block within easy reach for those times when you have light air and want to be able to turn-off the rachet. If you don't want to use a rachet in the system, a regular swivel-block will work there instead. Your sail size is borderline as far as needing to drop extra bucks for a rachet. It could be nice if you're going out when it's really blowing, but you could certainly live without it as long as you have the ability to cleat the sheet and give your hands a rest. This means the cleats need to be very reliable and release when you need them to, so it's worth going with ball-bearing cleats from Harken or Ronstan or big Clam-Cleats (the little ones for skinny line tend to jam).

[Leon m]

Very good advice...BUT...one problem I think
I'm going to have is the space between the mast
and mid boom will probable be used for seating
or stowing gear . I was hopeing I could rig it
in such a way as to not run lines along the
floor or anywhere between the floor and boom.

Can I run my mainsheet as you describe and then
back up to the boom and back to me? Or would I be
better off just runing my sheet to mid boom then
down to a block/ratchet?

PS after you told me about having a block at
deck level,I added a nice bronze block to the deck
of my wooden Sunfish and it made it much more comfortable. :cool: smile.gif

[ 08-03-2004, 11:29 PM: Message edited by: Leon m ]

[Todd Bradshaw]

I can't seem to find my copy of the sailplan for that boat in the big pile of misc. boat stuff (I did however find my plans for the Edmund Fitzgerald, just in case you want to go up to Bayfield in something that will really turn heads). Looking at the drawing on Payson's site, it's kind of hard to see the details, but the way they have the boat configured I wonder if you could run the system essentially backwards? Maybe something like deaden the mainsheet at the partners, then go up to the forward boom block, aft under the boom to the aft boom block and down to the skipper. It looks like any type of traveller would be right where you're sitting, so it may need to be deleted from the plan and replaced with a hook on each gunwale that you belay the sheet off of, or something similar. What do the plans suggest? If worse comes to worse, when you get to that point drag it over here and we'll rig it in the driveway and play with options. I've got a big box full of Harken blocks that I took off of the Star and we can rig various temporary combinations and see what happens.

[Leon m]

Thanks Todd !

[Dick Millet]

Okay so sailing it in light air was pretty much an exercise in frustration (once the winds picked up to 10 knots or so it started to get fun but they just died half an hour later). The whole week has been like this so I looked over what I had and re-read Todd's book yet again and came up with this:

http://mysite.verizon.net/rmillet/Gaffer2.jpg

It's still a cotton sail but 25 bucks will buy a lot of fabric store cotton for sewing practice and trying out various rigs. Once (if) I find a rig that works the way I want I'll spring the big bucks for real dacron sailcloth. I sewed this one up with nice narrow panels and made it look almost like something out of the book. Greatly improved my sewing skills over the last two days too. This one came out at 48.6 square feet and it appears that it might actually have enough area to move the boat along.

Anyway the question is will it work? Reading the book leads me to believe the mast might be a foot or so too short. I'm also a little unsure how to rig the gaff up. I appear to need two lines, one pulling against the center of the gaff and another pulling the front of it up. Should there be a block (or two) up there somewhere? The pictures in the book show what looks like a block pulling a short cord spanning the center third of the gaff and another pulling the front up but they appear rigged differently in different pictures. What needs to move and what needs to be solidly fixed? Forgive all the questions, I'm a real neophyte when it comes to sailing.

Thanks,

Dick

[Leon m]

Hey, it looks nice anyway...who knows ?

[ 08-07-2004, 01:17 AM: Message edited by: Leon m ]

[Dick Millet]

What an absolute riot! I took it out today with the new gaff rig and all I can say is, now I know why people sail. All that extra sail way up there on top enabled me to sail some pretty close reaches despite not really knowing what I was doing. When I first arrived there was only a light wind blowing from the NNW (the direction I had to go to get out into the river). I wound up paddling out into the river proper but once out there I could sail NNE albeit rather slowly. Once I got about halfway across I turned around and made pretty good time sailing back on a SW heading. After several more tacks I managed to get about a mile up the river at which point the wind began to really blow from the West. White caps and all made for a rather fun bit of sailing if a little wet. The guideboat doesn't have all that much freeboard upright, heeled over the rail is pretty much running right at the surface. I only took in about a gallon total and was never in danger of capsizing but sitting on the bottomboard did make for a rather wet butt. Once I finally turned around and headed back for the dock, the run with the leeboard up and a pretty much following wind took only about 10 minutes.

All in all a fantastic couple of hours on the water.

Dick