Building a Ross Lillistone First Mate

[SailFlorida]

It's great watching this progress, keep the updates coming! How'd the jib turn out? Looks pretty good from here - think it's comparable to a professionally made sail?

[The Jeff]

Thanks SailFlorida, glad you're enjoying my progress. I'm really not sure how it compares. I know my stitching is nowhere near professional level. The sewing machine was really having a hard time feeding the material evenly so some of the stitches are close together and others are farther away. Overall I managed to keep the stitches inside the seam allowance ok. I tried to rip a few test panels apart and I couldn't do it, so I think the sail should be pretty durable. The sewing on the leather patches looks amateurish, but it seems to be pretty solid.

Here's my machine setup. I bent a coat hanger into a little stand so the string would feed off the spool properly. Getting the tension right took a bit of trial and error on a scrap piece. Eventually I found a cotton ball clipped over the string provided enough tension that the stitches looked good.

[The Jeff]

I've finally got the sails done. It took 12 hours for the jib and about the same for the spritsail. I could definitely tell I was getting faster at it when I was working on the spritsail.


I started off by basting the patches onto the panel with the reef points. There are five patches while the jib only had four. I also had to make some 3" square patches for the actual reef points out of the scrap material supplied in the kit.





Next I sewed the bottom panels together and the top panels together along with their respective patches. At this point it kinda hit me how bulky this thing was going to be to sew.





Sewing on the head panel to everything else. I tried keeping it rolled up with clothespins, but they didn't work so well. The sail doesn't have parallel sides so I couldn't grab all the layers at once, and they weren't strong enough to bite in from the side.





But eventually I got all the panels sewn together and it was time to hem up the edges. The leech just got a double folded over hem, while the other edges got varying sizes of folded Dacron tape.





Sewing on the Dacron tape along the foot.





And again along the head. This is where I encountered the only problem in the Sailrite kit. I wasn't sent enough of the 1.5" Dacron tape to do the edges of the sails specified in the plans. I did have enough 4" tape left over so I could cut it down to 1.5" and piece it together. I emailed Sailrite so hopefully they'll get that right for the next kit.

[The Jeff]

Next up was to install the grommets





And finally it was done. Actually, I still have to sew on the leather around the four corners, but that has pretty much moved to the bottom of the list of things to do.

[The Jeff]

Wow, it's been a while since I updated this thread. I went to Egypt and Europe with my wife for three weeks in March to visit some of her family. I managed to herniate a disk over there, so I've also been recovering from that. I have got a ton done on the boat though, but haven't updated because everything was kinda being done concurrently and the pictures would jump around alot. Finally I've gotten to the point where I can post a series of pictures and have it all flow together.


In Egypt there were a lot of sailboats to take tourists on rides. Especially in Aswan, with fewer numbers in Luxor and Cairo. I didn't see any sailboats on the Red Sea except for modern fiberglass yachts. The sailboats are called feluccas and they are all made out of steel. They definitely need to be steel for all the beating and banging they do at the dock. We took a motor boat to the Philae temple in Aswan and if it's too crowded, the captain just sticks the bow in between two boat and guns it. The rudders are barn door style and they all had giant telephone pole sized tillers. The rigging and spars of the feluccas is made from whatever they can cobble together. Chafed rope, patched sails, and rusting boats seemed to be the norm. I even saw one that had a section of sail patched with tattered blue polytarp. Definitely no Harken blocks, Spectra line or NACA foils around here! Even with all the suboptimal parts, they were still beautiful to watch sailing back and forth across the Nile.



My last post on the hull was about installing the centerboard case. After that was epoxied down, I flipped the boat over and cut the slot for the centerboard. It was easy to lay out because the endposts stuck through.



I drew lines defining the edges of the slot, then jig sawed out the middle.



A router with a flush trim bit cleaned it up nicely. A sharp chisel cleaned out the corners.



With the centerboard case done, I flipped the boat back over and framed up the rowing thwart. This picture doesn't show it, but the forward crosspiece gets a stiffener glued from the gunnel down to the chine to prevent putting a hard spot in the hull.

[The Jeff]

Next I cut out the mast partner on the table saw and bandsaw. It's a lamination of two pieces of 3/4" yellow pine.





This piece has got to be accurately attached so the mast doesn't lean to one side. To do that, I marked the centerline of the boat, and the center of the notch that takes the mast. Then I clamped a strip of wood that would hold the partner at the right height from the deck. I drilled four holes through the bulkhead avoiding the glue line in the partner and screwed it down with some big stainless screws. Once I confirmed it'd all work, I took it off and epoxied it on. The screws pulled it down tight and I put some healthy fillets around the edges with the squeeze out. I'm not sure how much the screws are actually doing once the epoxy cures.





Next I worked on the decks. I had quite a bit of 1/4" plywood left over from the hull panels, so I tried to use up the scrap I had before cutting up my last full sheet. First I laid out some pieces to cover the side decks and made sure the joints were tight to each other.





Once they were clamped down I came in with an angle grinder and flap disk to carve out a depression for some fiberglass. If I was really thinking, I should have cut the fiberglass on a 45º angle so all the fibers were helping. Not that it'll really matter much once the deck is glued down.





Here's the decks with the joints fiberglassed.





Once the joints had cured and I faired them out with some thickened epoxy, I flipped everything over and glassed the underside of the joints . Then I gave the bottoms 3 coats of epoxy.




I'm not sure why some of the vertical pictures are turning horizontal when I link them...

[WI-Tom]

Looking great--you're going to love that boat when it's time to launch and sail.

Tom

[The Jeff]

Once the epoxy on the bottom of the panels cured, I cleaned them off and gave them a light sanding before gluing them in place. Clamping was tough since the bottom side of the gunnel is not parallel to the top. But I had good squeeze out all around, so it all worked fine. I did one section of deck each afternoon.





Glueing up the bow section. My heavy pieces of steel were handy for holding the center down. I put them on first before clamping to try and get all the slack out of the panel.





Here's how I did the joints where the side deck panels meet. I lapped them over so each lands on half the width of the bulkhead. I left everything proud so I can trim it to size with my router.





Working on the rear deck. Not much to clamp to, but the weights came in handy. The last little piece will be at the forward part of the motor well.





With the deck panels all glued down and trimmed up with the router, I decided to make a coaming at the front. It's not in the plans, but I think it'll help with any water coming over the bow. I started off with some 3/4" yellow pine and marked out where I thought they should go. Then I used a piece of cardboard as a template to scribe the curve of the deck. I could have just done this directly onto the wood, but it's easier to adjust the fit with the cardboard. Once the cardboard matched the deck, I traced it onto the wood and planed it to fit.





Just a vertical coaming would probably work ok, but angling them forward looks nicer. So I tipped them forward to oh-about-there-or-so and set my bevel gauge so I could keep track of the angle. Then I measured the gap at the back with a compass and scribed a line along the forward part. Everything under the scribe line and back to the existing edge has to be removed so the coaming will sit down flush.

[The Jeff]

Thanks Tom! You and your adventure write ups were a big inspiration for choosing this boat. I am going to Ocracoke Island in North Carolina in early June, so I've got a hard deadline for finishing it now.




Cutting the miter was the trickiest part. There's no good way to measure what it should be, not that there's anything flat to measure from anyway. So what I did was hold a square up on the centerline and just eyeball a line on the top of the coaming. The bottom of the coaming can be marked, then just connect the lines. Do this on both sides of the coaming and you'll see what needs to be removed. It took some trial and error to get it close and thickened epoxy will fill the gaps.





Test fitting to see if I like the shape. The ends are still long and it'll get a better curve on the top later. It's easier to do the miter first, then adjust the ends.





There's no good way to hold these down for gluing either, so I eventually decided on some screws from underneath. Screwing these in was a trip since I can only get one arm inside the inspection port and my back wasn't too happy at this point. I do have a ratcheting screwdriver which helped.





Here it is glued down with some thickened epoxy and filleted. I tapered the coaming some and rounded off the corners. It's a bit bigger than some I've seen, but it reminds me of the coaming on a Sunfish which is what I grew up sailing. Part of the reason I angled it forward so much is because I want room to put a large cleat on the centerline. This will let me use a lashing to keep the mast in the partner. This seems simpler and easier than making a hinged mast gate.





This angle looks a little better I think.





And here it is with three coats of epoxy on the decks. I also fiberglassed the underside with 6oz cloth, but I'll post pictures of that later. Like I said earlier, I jumped around a lot so the pictures aren't always in order.

[swoody126]

that splash rail is just RIGHT :-)

lovin your use of SCRAPS!

sometimes there'z no substitute for a bit of extra weight to encourage parts to conform ;-)

glued screwed & weighted ll.jpg

really enjoying the thread :-)

sw

[WI-Tom]

The boat looks great (and knowing the Phoenix III as well as I do, I'm sure it will be). Do you have a color scheme in mind yet? Starting to get close!

Tom

[fossilfool]

Good progress and photos!

[cracked lid]

Oh, how I remember working to screw the coaming down while the epoxy cured on my First Mate build. That was a ridiculous struggle.

[The Jeff]

Swoody, that is some serious weight! I'm not sure if my wife would approve of me borrowing her dumbbells for my boat.

Tom, the outside is already painted! I just did off white with a fairly wide green stripe under the gunnel. I think I'm going to have to wait and see it on the water before deciding if I like it or not. It's hard to get a good view of the boat in my garage. I think I'm going to paint the coaming green and some of the stuff on the inside possibly. Depends how much time I have left haha.

Thanks Fossilfool. I'm interested to see how yours performs.

Cracked lid, I remember standing there reading your build thread on my phone and trying to think of some other way to hold them down without a screw. I didn't have too much trouble screwing them down, but finding the screw by feel to take it out was awful. Also, my cardboard box at the rear finally started to collapse, so I made some of your slotted supports out of some scrap plywood.



Halfway through putting the decks on, a friend of mine drove down 7 hours for just the weekend to help me fiberglass it. Pretty crazy, but he's also the kind of guy that rides his bicycle in 180 mile races for fun. He built a Jim Michalak Mayfly 14 a few years ago and kept telling me to let him know when I get to the fiberglassing part and he'd give me a hand. Anyway, we laid out two strips of 6oz cloth and taped them down. There were very few wrinkles and the few that formed around the edge of the transom eventually smoothed out with a paintbrush. I wrapped the cloth so I had a double layer on the bow, seems better than just a seam up the stem.





Here it is after squeegeeing on three coats of epoxy. I carried the cloth along the underside of the gunnel and up to the edge. I did get a few air bubbles at the turn, but I later trimmed them out and put in a pass of thickened epoxy. After letting the epoxy cure for a few weeks while I finished up the decks, I came back and scraped and sanded out the runs and high spots. I found using the blade from a plane worked well to scrape off a thin strip of epoxy and it's long enough to get a section fairly flat. There were a few thin places in the epoxy so I later followed it up with a fourth coat which was enough.

[The Jeff]

Next up was the keel. This is cut out of 3/4" yellow pine and epoxied into place. Pro tip, don't put a weight on the stern first. The keel will slide off and nearly drop the weight on your feet. Not that I'd know anything about that... Also I cut the skeg out to the dimensions in the plans and it matched the curve of the bottom almost perfectly. That gives me confidence that either my boat is the right shape, or I'm just lucky.





Learning from my previous mistake, I mean... from the hypothetical situation, I put a temporary screw in the skeg to keep it from sliding back. After the epoxy cured I came back and put a nice round over on all the edges. I also put about a 1" radius on the corner of the skeg.





Cutting the slot for the centerboard was a nightmare. It should have been a 30 minute job, but for some reason I left most of my tools at the shop and didn't really have anything else I could work on. I didn't have my jig saw, so I hogged out a lot of the waste with a forstner bit. The only bit I had for the router took three passes to cut the full thickness of the keel, and I could only move over about 1/4" at the time before the bit's shaft started rubbing. So it was endless passes around the slot, lower the router, do it again. I think it took two or three hours to get this done. I would have been time ahead to just go back the the shop and get my tools.





Eventually though everything was done on the outside. I've been crawling around on the underside cleaning up epoxy runs and gluing on backing plates for some of the hardware.

[The Jeff]

Next it was on to painting. I might totally regret this later, but I went with exterior latex paint. My thinking is that since this boat is going to be trailer sailed, I don't mind touching it up when I have to. We'll see how well it holds up and there's always time to do it right later. This is after the first coat.





And here she is after the 5th coat. It's looking ok from a distance... but I could have spent more time fairing the hull out. Not too much of a problem, she'll get more dings and scratches from taking me on adventures.





Since I'm on a pretty big time crunch to get her ready to go by June 7th, I nearly skipped painting a stripe on the side. But I figured one afternoon wouldn't hurt so I jerry rigged up a batten to try and get a fair curve. Eventually I may put a motor on her, so she'll need to be registered. My state requires 3" tall numbers, so I made the strip 4.5" thick at the bow and stern. I've read a bit of a belly in the middle helps looks wise, so I increased the thickness to 6.5". It's hard to know whether this will look good until it's out on the water.





After tracing along the batten with a pencil, I removed everything and masked it off with painters tape.





After spending an eternity looking at paint cards in Home Depot, I settled on "equestrian green" for the stripe. After a while of looking at colors they all start looking the same to me. I'm a little worried the stripe is too big, but I'll probably have to see her in the water to really know for sure. I guess the only other option is to make the stripe much thinner so the registration numbers are under it instead of inside it.





One of my earliest memories as a kid was walking around the local boatyard while my father did some business there for the local Kiwanis club boat sale. I was poking around and came across a guy who had bottom painted his sailboat. He tossed me the ball of masking tape and I spent the rest of the afternoon throwing it around as I explored the yard. I'd nearly forgotten about that until I rolled my tape up into a ball after painting the stripe.

[The Jeff]

Sorry for the sideways pictures... Not sure what's causing that.

While the boat was upside down, I crawled under and painted the inside. Much easier than bending over, and you can actually see what you're doing on the underside of the decks.





After that I put down some moving blankets on the floor, flipped the boat over, and winched her onto the trailer. Getting the trailer ready was an ordeal in itself... You put them away for a decade and come back to dry rotten tires, rotten bunks, dried grease in the wheel bearings, destroyed wiring and lights... But eventually I got all that stuff fixed or replaced. I do need to adjust the spacing of the bunks and get some carpet for them. Currently the boat just barely sits level on them and wants to heel over.





While I was painting I also worked on the spars. The boom and sprit are glued up from three pieces of 3/4" yellow pine. The mast will be hollow. The sprit is 13'-4" and is the longest.





After band sawing the tapers as described in the instructions, I whipped up a quick 8 siding gauge and drew the corners. I used the bandsaw to cut off most of the waste to keep the planing to a minimum.





I got everything close with an angle grinder and 36 grit flap disk before smoothing everything down with a plane.

[The Jeff]

After making the sprit and boom, I worked on the birds mouth mast. My staves are 5/8" thick and 1-1/8" wide. Toward the top they taper down to about 7/8". They aren't too hard to make, it just took a lot of table sawing.





I cut the staves down to 13'-4" and the stubs fit together pretty well.







I made octagonal plugs for the top and bottom. The bottom one has a V cutout so there isn't an abrupt change in stiffness. I wasn't sure whether to make another V 90º to the first, but we'll see if it'll be ok.





I CNC plasma cut some support brackets that will hold the staves for gluing. I made them 1/8" bigger than what my mast should be so there is a little wiggle room.





Dry fitting the staves to get some practice before epoxying everything together. I placed the two brackets at the Bessel points which are 22% in from the end of a beam. Supporting a beam at these points minimizes the bow in the middle and droop at the ends. Sighting down the top and sides, it looked about as straight as I could determine. I plan to have the V notch going athwartships when the mast is installed.

[The Jeff]

Here's a closeup of the bracket. I didn't think about it when I was designing it, but that bit that supports the 3 o'clock stave traps the one below. Once everything is epoxied I'm going to have to bend it out of the way or cut it off.





Gluing it up was a bit stressful and didn't go so well. I originally tried to make a spatula that would fill the V groove nicely, but that took way too much time so I resorted to brushing on gobs of epoxy. That worked much better, although I probably should have put more epoxy into the groove. Then, I realized that my zip ties had to be doubled to get around the mast. So instead of having one every foot, it was more every two feet. I quickly grabbed some electrical tape and taped it as tightly as I could. There are a few places in the mast where the epoxy didn't ooze out so I later filled them as best I could. If I ever make another (and that's a big if) I think it's better to be a bit wasteful with the epoxy. A lot of work goes into making the staves and it's probably better to have a lot of squeeze out than a ruined and unsalvageable mast.





Planing the mast down. Afterwards I gave the spars about 6 coats of varnish.





Finally! Testing the spars to see where the leather should go and to determine the lengths of line needed. The jib halyard and snotter are 1/4" Spectra, everything else 5/16" Dacron or 1/8" VB cord for lashings. Everything mostly fits and I can figure out the proper downhaul/outhaul/snotter location later. I think I figured out the sideways picture thing... it's exif data in the file itself. I'll go through all the pictures and change that. Someday.





Next I bought all the fittings for the boat. While I have a bit of experience sailing, I really don't have any experience outfitting a boat. So it took a lot of research looking for things I don't know the name of and trying to find decent prices. Eventually I rounded everything up and started installing it on the boat with butyl rubber bedding. This is basically where I am today. I have everything made, it's just putting it all together now.

[fossilfool]

Something I've been wondering about with the design of the First Mate is the height of the Carlings. I am making mine taller by a bit than the plans show, but still less than 2". I have studied Lillistone's writing and videos. He put a lot of emphasis on usability and cruising comfort and suggests sitting on the floor, not benches/thwarts during light winds. But the thing you lean your back against when you're on the floor is less than 1.5" tall. What do you think Jeff? Do you plan to sail with cushions?

I think maybe the Carlings are small because it's easier to work them into place. But the bigger ones I made don't seem hard to curve.

Or maybe it's a style thing, or...?

/ Paul

[WI-Tom]

For whatever it's worth, I've put a lot of miles in the Phoenix III, and I generally prefer to sit on removable side benches. When on long runs or broad reaches, I do sometimes sit on the keelson with a cushion behind my back to lean up against the sternsheet bulkhead, with the tiller over my shoulder. But I find side benches more comfortable overall--it's nice to be sitting higher up. The side decks and carlins make a pretty nice backrest--I haven't ever wished they were bigger.

Tom

[The Jeff]

I sat down on the floor for the first time last night and I was surprised at how comfortable it was to lean up against the carlins. Although how that will feel for a day of sailing, I don't know. I do plan to make side benches at some point, if only that I'll need them if I'm going to sleep in the boat. I've simply run out of time for non essential stuff if I'm going to have the boat ready for vacation next week.


Thanks for the first hand experience Tom. How cramped was it with two people during your Everglade Challenge? What seating arrangements did you generally use?

[WI-Tom]

It's fairly tight with two people aboard, but not uncomfortably so. Usually the helmsman sits on the side benches, and the crew sits on the rowing thwart, facing either forward or backward. The helmsman is always more comfortable, as there isn't really a backrest for the rowing thwart. You can kind of use a cushion against the sloping aft face of the centerboard case as a backrest if you face aft, though. It's not too bad. We've done some long days with two aboard.

On the Texas 200 my friend Pete and I found another combination that worked well for running and broad reaching, where you want crew weight farther back in the boat: helmsman far back on the windward side bench (almost on the sternsheets seat), and crew seated on the keelson, facing aft, with a cushion to lean back against the rowing thwart. Again, this was pretty tight, but comfortable for both.

Tom

[The Jeff]

Here's how I made the centerboard case cap. I just cut out some 3/4" yellow pine pieces and then epoxied the joints together with thickened epoxy. I was a bit worried about how fragile it'd be, but so far it's held together fine while sanding, epoxying, and painting it.





Drilling pilot holes for the screws in the 1/2" plywood sides of the centerboard case presented a good opportunity to mess up. Fortunately everything went smoothly with no extra holes.





Finally, the last thing to make for the boat was the rudder cheeks and the tiller. I started off making the rudder cheeks from plywood with a spacer as shown in the plans. Everything was going pretty well until I went to epoxy everything together. Somehow the cheeks got pinched together so that they were too tight to take the rudder. This was a major disaster as my vacation was coming up and I simply didn't have enough time to go through the fiberglassing and making a new one. So, I welded up a new one from aluminum. The side pieces are 1/4" and I have some tubing in the middle as spacers. A little block on the forward side provides a stop for the rudder downhaul to pull the rudder against.





After getting the rudder cheeks figured out, I attached the pintles and gudgeons and gave it a test. I also installed a spring metal hold down. Probably not really needed, but it does give me peace of mind that the rudder can't pop off. Bonus points to any eagle eyed forumite who can tell what's on the far side of the boat.





And finally the tiller. This is a piece of 1" Cumuru deck board I salvaged from a dumpster on a job site. Sometimes it astounds me how much stuff gets thrown away on new construction. The plans called for a 3/4" tiller, so I had to whittle the end down. To do that I cut a ton of kerfs with the table saw and then just slid the tiller sideways across the blade to clean up the bottom.





And finally! Everything was built, painted, varnished, and strapped down and I was on my way to Ocracoke Island in North Carolina for a week. I installed the last of the fittings the evening before we left and even spent a few hours whipping the ends of all the lines on the ride down. But when we arrived, the boat was done!





I'll start a thread in People and Places about the trip eventually, and I'll keep this thread updated regarding any future repairs or modifications (of which there's already a list).

[The Jeff]

It probably wouldn't be fair to leave everyone hanging, so here's a picture of my wife and I sailing around at sunset. Funny enough, we later searched through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and found 3 pictures and a video of us from this sail. All random people we don't know and one of which said this is why he gets up at 4am to see the sunrise.

[fossilfool]

Nice going getting to a stopping point and going for a sail! And nice aluminum work.

[WI-Tom]

After getting the rudder cheeks figured out, I attached the pintles and gudgeons and gave it a test. I also installed a spring metal hold down. Probably not really needed, but it does give me peace of mind that the rudder can't pop off.

Oh, you'll be plenty glad to have that rudder hold-down. It's more necessary than you might think.

Forgot to say your boat looks great under sail!

Tom

[adktripper]

very nice! Congrats on launching!

[SailFlorida]

Great pic, congrats on the launch! What are your thoughts on the build at this stage? Anything you'd do differently next time around? How's it sail?

[The Jeff]

I spent some time over the holidays putting together a blog about building and sailing this boat. I have all of my building pictures up in separate categories with captions so it should be easier to follow how I built her. I've also made a section with pages detailing the two trips I've taken so far. There will definitely be more to come this summer! Building the website has really got my imagination going with little adventures to do.

Here it is: http://sailingmoga.com/

I named the boat Moga because my wife is from Egypt and moga means wave in Arabic. Also I think Moga has some hint of an idyllic Pacific island to me for some reason. I didn't explain the name on here earlier because truthfully I haven't even painted it onto the boat yet. But it's coming!

[fossilfool]

Nice blog. Inspiring sailing reports. Is yours really 150 pounds? Have you weighed the hull? Paul

[The Jeff]

Thanks fossilfool. I haven't weighed mine, that was just a rough guess. I used probably 5 sheets of 1/4" Okoume, and 1 sheet of 1/2". According to Boulter Plywood's website, that is 127 pounds. I can imagine there's at least 23 pounds of yellow pine in the framing, spars, epoxy, fiberglass, fittings etc. At the end of this article a commenter says his Phoenix III is 185 pounds, but he didn't try to build for light weight. I should get a spring scale and weigh it. Do you know how much yours is?

[fossilfool]

I think weighing is a hassle and you shouldn't do it unless weight really matters to you. It's a hassle to make a sling that puts your boat flat when lifting from the middle. Weighing from two points and adding those hasn't been accurate for me. When would weight matter? It would matter if you were planning to hand carry or bike your boat around. It must matter to performance, specifically how much wind you need to get up on plane.

I measured my hull without the rig at 275 pounds, but there are some asterisks. Most importantly I scaled it up 12.3%. Scaling up increases volume by the cube of the scaling factor, which means approximately a 42% increase volume-wise. If you remove the 42% increase in materials from scaling mine would have been 193 lbs. Also I put in various features to the boat to make it bike-trailable, like this second midships web frame with carbon fiber sockets. Also I put in access hatches to the bow and stern buoyancy compartments. All of these choices increased weight. My choice to use G10 as the hull material, though I hoped it would decrease weight, probably increased weight, because I added more knees to increase the stiffness.

Throughout the build I was aware and concerned about weight. I ended up swapping carbon for wood in the centerboard, mast, boom, yard, oars, and even smaller details like the mast step, mast gate, and mast partner. I was also excited to learn carbon fabrication and willing to take the time. I think I have saved 30+ pounds on the complete weight of my boat by doing all these substitutions. You can see some of them in this yard sailing vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kkBRkUwaJY

So I increased weight in some ways and decreased weight in some ways and they probably evened each other out. I have also lost about 10 pounds of body weight during the build!

[The Jeff]

I've got access to a tractor with a backhoe, so I don't think it'd be too hard to rig up a sling from a piece of line with two big bowlines on either end to go around the hull. I figure I can just lift it a few inches off the trailer without too much trouble. I do a fair bit of deer hunting and keep putting off getting a hanging scale, so maybe this will be the motivation. I would be interested in knowing the weight, if only to satisfy my curiosity.

I didn't think about the volume increase being so large on your boat, I bet it feels completely different to sail.


I've got a few modifications I want to make before I take it out again in the spring:

1. Rig up a brail line. I've got a boom and am debating whether the brail line should go throat -> clew -> throat -> down, or throat -> leech grommet -> throat -> down and pivot the boom up by hand, or throat -> clew -> throat -> leech grommet -> throat -> down. I feel like the last option would do the best job of gathering everything up securely, but it would result in over 50' of line as it's basically a 4:1 pulley system.

Every time I've launched I've had trouble getting blown back into the dock before I get going, so I'm hoping a brail system will let me row out to a clear spot, open up the sails and quit looking like a fool haha.

2. I need to reshape the jaw/boom connection and leather it better. Currently the boom rubs the varnish off the mast if it angles up any at all.

3. A tiller extension would be nice so I can sit closer to the main thwart and get better fore and aft trim. I also want to experiment with a vang up to the end of the sprit that Ross talks about here. That would require a fairlead and cleat added to the tiller. I'm especially interested to get some GPS data on how much the vang helps.

There's a bunch of other little things, but those three would be a nice start.

[The Jeff]

One of the problems I’ve had with the spritsail is that it’s a little hard to get hoisted and set up correctly. The main issue stems from the fact that the snotter fouls on the sail’s lacing. What I’ve been doing is to hoist the sail, attach the snotter to the correct location on the mast with a rolling hitch, slip the notch on the sprit into the peak lacing, reeve the snotter through the sprit tackle, and finally tension and cleat it off. While all this is going on, my boat is banging itself into the dock or the sails are getting caught against the top of pilings. Clearly there must be a better way and eventually I read about a brail line which bundles the sail up against the mast. This will allow me to row out a bit before unfurling the sail and hopefully save my paint job.





Open vs brailed.





A closer view of the brail line setup. A light line runs on the far side of the sail from the halyard bowline to a grommet on the leech. After coming through the grommet, it goes on the outside of the sprit and back up to a 1" diameter stainless ring tied in the halyard bowline. Then it runs down the mast to a cleat. The leech grommet should be the same distance from the peak grommet as the throat grommet is from the peak grommet.





A closeup of the throat. I kept everything tied into the halyard bowline to try and prevent as much stress on the sail as possible. I also added a patch at the leech grommet that folds around the leech to hopefully spread out the stress.





A closeup of the brail line in action.


Currently I’ve only tried this without the boom because I need to reshape the jaw/boom connection a bit. But I expect I can just push the boom up by hand while I’m brailing up the sail and wrap the brail line around it to bundle everything together.





While I was busy working on rigging everything, my shop helper was busy checking out the accommodations in the foc’sle.