Sea Trials

26 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by shemaya in Junk Rig, Sailing/Boat Handling, the boat, Trips

Suzanne making adjustments to the mizzen rigging

After a little over a week at the dock, taking care of everything from remaining rigging to another tidbit of wiring, a couple of days ago we got to see the sails actually move the boat. Systems were tested, challenges found, and after that little sail the night was spent anchored in back of Eustasia Island, about a half a mile down the river from Warren’s dock. The following morning, early to catch the last of the outgoing tide and the morning north wind, we had rig test number two. And, most importantly, a beautiful sail in the morning mist.

For those in suspense about the minimal camber in these sails, I’m happy to say that the boat does indeed sail upwind, rather nicely, so far. Better than I was doing with the Paradox mainsail, at least it seems that way at this point. I’m going to have to try more upwind work with no current, to be more sure about it.

Surprises on that first day, in the very light wind and bit of current, were issues with steering. The shifting tiny wind on the now much larger sails was often not enough to move the boat fast enough for the rudder to work well on the water, but it was enough to shift the orientation of the boat dramatically. I was glad there was no traffic. I had the pleasant company of Warren and Margo, and they were very good-natured about our various pirouettes, gradually riding the current north, and then after the tide changed, back toward the dock in Deep River.

Funnily enough, Warren and I met originally because of another steering problem after the very first launch of the boat in 2012. Like in this new test, my understanding of how the sails were working together was a work in progress, and the small trolling motor that I had at that time was not enough to overpower the tight mizzen sail, which should have been released at the first sign of steering distress. As it was, in that first launch 2 1/2 years ago the boat wanted to go only in a straight line, perpendicular to the opposing wind and current, and only good luck with quick anchoring prevented sailing broadside directly into Warren’s docked boat. (His boat is an enormous steel sailboat, so is fortunately well defended.) After that experience we got the Torqeedo, and I started to understand how to manage a yawl rig.

The other day, with Warren here in this very same boat, and the new junk rig, we once again had issues with ineffective steering. This was true while sailing in very light wind, turning unintentional circles, and then again having dropped the sails and having direction-holding complications while motoring to the dock, after the wind had picked up a little. Like two and a half years ago, it was again wind against tide, this time with the complication of all the new windage from the furled mainsail in the bow. On the bright side, I could be looking at this situation as an opportunity to embrace motorless sailing, including for docking in complicated situations. At least if the sails are up, once you understand their mechanics you know what they are up to, and with any breeze at all you have considerably more power than comes from a very lightweight motor. Another alternative would be a motor with more torque, and effective reverse – perhaps the next size up of Torqeedo, the 2.0.

The Torqeedo I have now (the 1003) has an extremely stiff locking tab to hold the motor down – it’s virtually impossible to lock and unlock, so I leave it in its unlocked position. This is fine for gentle reversing out of a slip, but with that lock unsecured, doing any kind of heavy reversing causes the motor to tip up, creating all sorts of havoc as well as not doing the job at hand. My present understanding of the docking issue, with all the windage and resulting steering problems, is that one would need to come in with more speed so the boat had better steering, and then be able to use reverse to slow the boat in a short distance. Of course, if I was a truly elegant boat handler, the thing to do would be to understand all the forces, working with what the boat wanted to do, and place it in such a way that all that windage would be used to advantage, moving the boat into its desired location. I’m studying on that.

Further thought on the unintentional pirouettes while sailing has led me to the hypothesis that this is the result of my tinkering with the sail area. This makes boat designers crazy – people start messing with designs and then are unhappy when there are completely unexpected results. My present guess is that putting so much sail area on this hull – a good bit more than the original design, and a lot more than I had with the Paradox rig – does not work well together with the designed keel and rudder. The boat becomes like a dry leaf falling from a tree through swirling winds, going this way and that with not enough shape under the water to provide direction against that large spread of “leaf.” I think that in a consistent tiny breath of air there would probably be no problem. This issue is not the boat’s fault – after all, I’m the one who went and put on all that extra sail area. Counterintuitively, the solution is probably reefing for tiny, shifting light wind, particularly in combination with complicated current.

In that first test the other day, the tiny air movement was shifting direction, and on top of that the current was doing different things in different places, as the river came back together after flowing past an island. Having no effective steering was an odd sensation – this was not my experience with this boat in extremely light winds, once I had come to understand the yawl rig and how to manage it. In fact, this boat did a very nice job of holding its direction in tiny wind. Thinking on the leaf example, my new plan is that I will indeed try reefing the sails in those conditions of minimal and changing wind, especially when combined with shifting subtle current. The large sail area may very well come into its own on the open water in very light wind, where the air movement holds its direction. It’ll be interesting to see.

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The next day…

On the second morning, there was no problem steering. The mainsail had only four panels up, instead of six, and the mizzen sail had five panels instead of six. The breeze was very light, but enough to riffle the surface of the water (unlike the previous tiny wind test, when the water was mostly glassy). Again we were traveling with the current, and there were occasional swirls. It was both peaceful, and satisfying. A rainstorm with northeast wind was predicted for the next day after that, so my destination was a side creek off of the river about 5 miles south from where I had just spent the night. This creek is particularly well sheltered from the northeast, and is quite pretty, with some very interesting bird activity. I was pretty set on getting there.

Leaving first thing in the morning from the back of Eustasia Island meant that there would be favorable current for a couple of hours. If the northerly wind picked up, it would then be possible to sail against the beginning of the flood tide. As it turned out, it was a very pretty sail, but that increase in wind didn’t happen. A little over a mile short of my destination the current started to get going in the other direction, and with progress diminishing, I turned into another side creek that I had always wanted to explore. It was perfect as a place to wait for the next ebb tide, though unfortunately likely to go to mud flat when that tide went out, or I would have stayed; with so much already happening, testing the new beaching legs was more than I wanted to take on. One day in the future I’d like to go in there with the right timing for low tide to investigate if there’s a little deep spot somewhere – because there’s so little water, there is no activity in there, and it’s quite peaceful. This is in back of Nott Island, across from Essex, Connecticut.

As it was, by early afternoon when the tide was running out the wind had picked up from the southeast. This means a lot of tacking to go south in this part of the river, but with the current helping it’s not so bad, and interesting to weave in and out of the huge mooring field at Essex, with a number of elegant traditional sailboats to see along the way. The wind came up some more, which was particularly good from a sea trial perspective. I’m happy to say that the boat sails quite nicely in those conditions with the new rig. Particularly noticeable is that it tacks comfortably, settling in on the new heading without a lot of falling off, which has often been an issue. Perhaps this good behavior had to do with the current, but I’ll be especially pleased if it continues generally.

During the interlude at Nott Island I had the opportunity to make adjustments to the mast lift and lazy jacks. They had been set quite low in order to allow for full raising of the mainsail, but I had neglected to take into account just how fully that low boom and overall sail would block visibility from the cockpit. Coming down the river in the morning, with the sail out wide to starboard, a lot of contortions were required in order to see forward off the starboard bow. Tweaking those lines was a big improvement, though it came at the cost of not being able to fully raise the last panel of the sail.

Really, the new mast could’ve been another foot taller. Or the new sail could have been made with boom and battens at 12 feet instead of 13 (boom/batten length determines the rest of the dimensions in the Reddish junk sail design process). Given the steering experience discussed above, the slightly smaller sail dimensions would probably be ideal, but I’m still pondering on this. As it is, with one or two panels reefed the boat still has a lot of sail area, carried lower… maybe that’s okay too, nicely filling the space above the cabin. Conventional wisdom says that it’s better to have a certain amount of height, rather than a very broad shorter sail, to most effectively drive the boat, so we’ll see how it goes.

While we were sailing south, a big Nonesuch catboat was tacking down the river, coming out of Essex with us having a good head start. They of course eventually passed us by, but I was impressed that it did take some time, and a number of tacks for both boats, before that happened. And that boat was under full sail. The wind was something like 12 knots – easy for a larger boat, but time for reefing in my world, though with some sacrifice in speed. Anyway, with that other boat for a measure, the new rig came out looking quite respectable. And that’s with AUKLET heavily loaded for cruising!

By the end of the day I was snug in my creek, in back of Goose Island. Further rigging adjustments are in progress, based on all the new information, and it’s perfectly beautiful watching the water, and the gentle rain, and the trees on the hillside just starting to turn toward their fall colors. I couldn’t be more pleased.

Afloat!

16 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by shemaya in Junk Rig, the boat, Trips

≈ 8 Comments

Deep River, Connecticut. On Sunday, September 14, the boat showed once again that it is perfectly capable of floating. I always wonder, in those intervening months…

Photos:

From the ramp, we went around the couple hundred yards to my friend Warren’s dock. The same afternoon, the mizzen sail went on…

Still to go, a little more interior wiring that wasn’t quite done, and rigging the mainsail, after which the boat should be ready for action. Steering was nice, on the way over here, so that felt good. Sea trials in the river, hopefully soon…

Many thanks to all!

Two Stories

21 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by shemaya in How Does This Work, Junk Rig, the boat, Why Go Sailing

≈ 4 Comments

So let’s get real, on the subject of fear. Now and then people say to me, or they say to my friends, something about me being brave, with all this boat stuff. And I have to say, it’s not exactly bravery. There’s something to do with psychic muscle – so many plans made, so many people helping, so much generosity received. Such an opportunity, not to be left to pass by, floating away down the stream. So you say yes, and get in the boat. But it gets harder to leave, every time.

Suzanne and I have bought a house – by the water, on the coast, in Maine. Gradually, through some combination of miracles that I cannot properly see ahead, I believe that we will actually move. But it makes departure from home – this home, of these last many years – that much more difficult, even just for a sail. The summer is so sweet: ignoring the city sounds, hearing crickets and katydids, and the soft summer smells, Massachusetts hardwood forest, and a yard full of plants, August-green. Never mind the traffic, and the music from the cars and the bar down the street. Katydids, and crickets. Daytime birds, and the night, late, when the street finally goes quiet.

How to leave? Knowing that I will probably not live again in this house, in August, with the summer smells, and night sounds of the raucous insects. I grew up in Massachusetts, and then went so far away, for so long. Utah, Arizona, California, and years in southern New Hampshire, not the same. Lived in the pine forest, in another corner of Massachusetts – beautiful, but no summer meadow. Arrival to the warmth of new friends is beautiful, and sweet. It’s the departures that I can’t stand.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There was a date set: August 18, 2014. A Monday, with fine weather, and early in the week to avoid the heavy summer boat traffic on the river, and their big wakes at the ramp and adjacent dock. Melissa and Richard were set to bring their truck to Holyoke (from Maine – kind souls) to haul the boat and pop it in the water. Friends in Deep River were welcoming, with a spot at their dock all ready to go. And still, I was conflicted. For all the above reasons, as well as practicalities to do with the unfinished tasks. More rigging, especially – so much easier at home. Still, it could have been done.

On the Thursday before, as every day since we set this date three weeks earlier, Suzanne and I went off for projects – this particular morning, more work on the wiring in the mainmast. We completed the connections at the top of the mast, and with a small 12 V battery clipped to the lower end of the wires, confirmed, with satisfaction, that the Bebi-adapted tricolor and the anchor light both worked. Next it was on to the lower end of the wires.

There are so many opportunities for mistakes in a complex, long project such as this, and they are inevitable. In the normal, unhurried course of things this is not a terribly big problem – annoying at the time, and/or embarrassing, but over the long stretch of months or years, not particularly significant. For example, cutting a wire too short. Sadly, or perhaps for the best, I did that with one of our mast wires. There are reasons that this happened, clear in retrospect, but that did nothing for the 12 V wire that was now going to need more heat shrinks, and fuss, and complications with needing an extra person to help turn the mast in the garage so doing all that would be possible. All this on Thursday, when Friday morning was our chance to go forward with planned help for the items assigned to that day – NOT putting scant time into resolving this admittedly small complication.

In a fit of frustration, I blurted out “I don’t even want to GO on this trip!” That has been so hard to prepare for, working these last weeks, Suzanne at least as tired as I, and equally frazzled. The ache of leaving, again. The boat not really ready, and myself either.

In the end, thanks to that pesky wire, and the two of us out there crying in the driveway, together we pulled the metaphorical plug on this launch plan. It’s the best decision I’ve made in ages. I miss the sailing, and seeing everybody, and the quiet water. But I don’t miss the strain of departure, and the difficulties of sorting out the boat necessities so far from our handy shop. Tables for stretching out the mainsail with all its long battens, in comfortable positions for attaching the rest of the zillion lines and fussy ties. Sawhorses for masts, in easy locations in the shade, happy in the yard, tying on halyards and everything else. And I don’t miss the fear.

A few days ago, Monday the 18th arrived, and passed, here at home. All day long I felt extra happy to be here. Now there’s a sign of a right decision! Work on the boat has continued, with comfort, and relaxed joy. Not without complication – it turns out that it’s really good that we didn’t leave, because drilling for the mainmast retaining pin has not been simple. And neither has raising and lowering that mast. There will be more to say about this, over time. But presently, the bottom line is that perhaps the boat will go in the water this fall, or perhaps not. It’s only August, and there are still September and October after all. Having missed the last two years of summer and early fall here at home, it might be just perfect to stay, and savor. The water is not going anywhere, and spring will come soon.

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Masthead Fittings

07 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by shemaya in Junk Rig, the boat

≈ 2 Comments

In changing over to (or originally building) a junk rig, one of the questions that needs to be resolved is how all those many lines will run to and from the top of the mast, or masts. Sorting out a plan, and then implementing it, has been a process.

The most common approach seems to be having a special cap, with an array of attachment points, either cast or fabricated. Some Wharram catamarans deal with masthead attachments using two horizontal rods, one above the other, at 90° to one another, which make places for either lashings or loops tied around the mast to catch and avoid slipping down. Another alternative is a small eye strap screwed to the mast at the backside of each lashing; the lashing is supported sturdily around the mast, and is prevented from sliding down toward the deck by the eyestrap. I’m partial to the methods that avoid putting substantial holes through the mast… In the previous AUKLET rig, that last method with the eye straps is what I did for the halyards, and it worked well.

The tricky thing about a junk rig is how very many lines need to be connected to the top of the mast. Some folks still do it with lashing, and that was my fallback plan, but I was hoping for something more like a proper fitting. At the same time, I was not excited about trying to sort out the fabrication process (welder? foundry? galvanizing??), and there was some question about the appropriate diameter for the fittings for the two masts anyway; waiting for that clarification meant that fabrication could not be started decently ahead of time.

Considerations on the diameter question have been that the original wood mizzen mast, which we are still using, is taller than needed for the halyard and other lines for the junk sail, but I have wanted to keep that extra height (flags!), and the mainmast that we had been using really needed to be changed out. As a result, there were questions until very recently about the mast fitting diameters. As far as I know, there is no place to get stock, already made junk rig masthead fittings.

But there’s another option! Traditional gaff rigged sailboats make use of a fitting called a “mastband.” This is a slightly tapered ring, generally with either two or four eyes arranged at equal distances around the ring (photos follow). The eyes can be used for shackling on blocks, or for tying lines directly. Mastbands are not perfectly easy to find – they are not something available from the ordinary sailing catalogs – but fortunately there is a company that still makes them. That company is Davey, in England, and they make a variety of sizes, in either bronze or galvanized steel. Their hardware can be found in the US in the R&W Rope catalog http://rwrope.com/ , as well as through Toplicht http://www.toplicht.de/en/index/, which is located in Germany – their online catalog is now in English as well as the original German. (As always, I’m not receiving anything for these mentions or links – but both those catalogs sure are fun!)

Standard mastbands with four eyes are pretty close to the typical five attachment points of a custom junk rig masthead fitting. With an extra line looped around the mast immediately above the fitting, prevented from sliding down by the fitting itself, I think it’ll work out fine. (This looped line will be the “mast lift,” for those who follow junk rigs more closely.) The mastband will be oriented so that the eyes are positioned on the 45° diagonals, relative to the centerline of the boat – this way one of the eyes will be at the appropriate angle for the halyard, which is the highest stress line that hauls the sail up, and for a junk rig is supposed to be at that 45° angle, somewhat off to the side.

The next questions are the particular choices, and how these mastbands will actually be secured to their respective masts. There’s a bronze band for the wooden mizzen, and a galvanized one for the aluminum mainmast. Bronze hardware and aluminum masts do not fare well together, so it’s galvanized there, and bonus, it’s more economical – but the bronze is very pretty, and I sprung for that for the smaller mizzen. On a wood mast, typically there is either a small shelf carved into the mast for the band to rest on, or small wood stops are screwed to the mast, to prevent the band from working its way down. Neither option seemed particularly exciting, because of compromising the already small-diameter wood, and as it turned out the position that would be ideal for the band is above where the band that we have would rest naturally, and below where the next smaller size would fit.

Here’s a photo of the mizzen sail laid on top of the mast, to help figure out the mastband placement (really, the sail goes on the other side of the mast). It’s important that when the sail is raised, the halyard attachment is a decent amount higher than where the halyard is tied to the yard. This is because of potential torque on the top of the mast when the sail is out to the side. Having a length of extra halyard between the masthead fitting and the yard prevents that torque – and potential mast damage – from happening.

Because the ideal position for the mizzen mastband is halfway between the two available band sizes, we have yet another experiment: securing the mastband is being done with small wedges made from cedar shingles, jammed up from the bottom, with top ones going down over the bottom ones wherever there are gaps. The lower wedges are seized in place with tarred nylon seine twine and trimmed, and the top ones are trimmed flush with the band and then caulked to prevent water coming in from the top.

I would’ve liked to have used dolfinite in this process – mast rot can be an issue, with everything so tight against the mast – but it seemed like it would be a hopeless mess to try to get dolfinite in there with all those shifting wedges and adjustment. So the theory here is that the caulk will prevent endless drenching from above, and the gaps between the cedar wedges will allow for drying from below. We’re hoping for the best on this, and will be paying attention to how it fares. The white caulk is a bit glaring now, but probably next year it will be time to paint the mast, and the upper part will be the traditional white, so it should all blend in.

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Then there’s the mainmast…

Fitting the mastband to the tapered aluminum mainmast presented two problems: one, the mastband was not perfectly circular, so it rocked when placed on the mast. Additionally, because of the difference in taper between the mast and the inside of the band, there was a substantial gap all around the upper section of where the band would otherwise be meeting the mast. This contributed further to the rocking.

We decided to apply dynel fabric and epoxy to this situation. Dynel is nicer to work with than fiberglass – no splinters in your skin, and the fabric holds together a little better than fiberglass cloth when you’re working with it; otherwise it’s the same idea. The theory was to get one layer of dynel around the mast, extending above and below the band, and then to scrunch the epoxy-wetted fabric into the gaps, as well as creating a small roll below the fitting, to give the fitting something secure to rest against. An added advantage to this arrangement is that the aluminum and galvanized steel are electrically isolated from one another. Although these two metals are supposedly fairly compatible, it’s relaxing to know that there will be no galvanic corrosion to worry about.

In the end, rather than wrapping one piece of dynel around the mast, it was easier to cut pieces of dynel to fit around the mastband, dry, with temporary masking tape on the outside, and then to put epoxy on the inside section, and slide the whole thing onto the (previously scuffed) mast. After this, the masking tape was gently pulled off and the dynel stretched out above and below the band. Once stretched out, epoxy went on all of the remaining fabric, and then the fabric was delicately folded back toward the ring. Theo had a handy thin stick in one hand, and a narrow putty knife in the other, and with Suzanne taking care of brushing the epoxy onto the fabric it all worked pretty well. Theo used the little stick to help spread the epoxy and work it into the fabric, and then to help with rolling and tucking the whole business into place.

The only complication was that once the dynel was all folded and stuffed, it had a kind of puffy thing going on, and declined to stay scrunched into one solid lump. We ended up wrapping the whole business in Saran wrap, and then applying masking tape to press the dynel snugly against itself and the mast/mastband joint. This arrangement worked out fine, except for that the Saran wrap was not exactly ideal when it came to later getting it off the hardened epoxy. It did do a good job of preventing the masking tape from being glued into the dynel/epoxy, but my dreams of the plastic wrap neatly peeling off were quite far from the truth! Still, when we took it all off the next day, and spent about an hour of fussy removal of small broken pieces of plastic wrap, it came out pretty good. Sandpaper is next, after the full week of curing (epoxy dust is quite toxic before it’s fully cured), and then the whole thing should clean up just fine. The dynel/epoxy will be painted later, to protect it from uv.

So now there are two mast bands in place! Each of them feels quite solid and secure, and presently we’re working on mounting the brackets for the tricolor light and AIS antenna at the top of the mainmast. It’s going to be fun to start attaching lines!

Battens

23 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by shemaya in Junk Rig

≈ 4 Comments

Battens on a junk rig are a really big deal. Unlike the somewhat flexible strips found in most Western rigs, junk rig battens are stiff, and more substantial in terms of both size and weight. They hold the sail down when it is reefed, generally without any ties at all, and support the sail in much the same way as in fully battened Western sails, but more stiffly. They are versatile, so that if a batten breaks, or a sail panel tears, neighboring battens can be lashed together for continued sailing under reduced canvas. Having all these jobs and capabilities, it comes as not such a surprise that making junk rig battens can be a bit of a job.

First off, I want to say that it doesn’t have to be this hard. Two pieces of bamboo, lashed together with overlapping narrow ends, can be wired to a sail right through the fabric. And the sail doesn’t have to be complicated either – it can be cut out of a tarp off the shelf at the local discount store, and still sail around the circumference of the British Isles. Vincent Reddish did that, and was quite happy with the results. Still, there’s something to be said for the more involved version, taking after suggestions found in the book Practical Junk Rig.

Sails from the sailmaker just sort of happened, after much thought of tarps and whatnot. Any part of this effort that doesn’t have to involve Suzanne and Theo doing more stuff is a great thing. And now we have really nice sails. To go with those sails, battens that won’t tear them up make sense. That means no rough batten ends, and no splitting bamboo. Furthermore, the entire point of the junk rig is to make sailing easier. Equipment in need of repair 50 miles offshore in a howling wind is not an example of fulfilling that goal! So it’s sturdy aluminum battens, with nice rounded plugs in the ends, with grooves in the plugs to catch the little lines that stretch the sail out taut along the battens, and hold the battens in place. When Stuart, of Dabbler Sails, makes other traditional small craft sails, he makes regular batten pockets with grommets as shown in the photo farther down, one grommet on the edge of the sail, and one on the end of the pocket. That sounded good when he suggested it, so that’s what we have. I think it’ll be very workable.

Another word about the plugs. I looked all over on the Internet for something basic along the lines of a rounded plastic end plug that would fit this aluminum tubing. My Internet skills could be better – I’m sure they’re out there somewhere. Fortunately, among Theo’s very many skills, she is experienced with woodworking using a lathe. Which she has in her shop. Next thing you know, here we are with beautifully turned wooden plugs, just right for the job. The grooves went in by hand, and then they all marched off to the paint shop.

Now the plugs have been caulked into most of the tube ends, first one end, and then some care to make sure that the ones in the other end go in aligned with the first ones. The funny thing was that yesterday, when we did the second ends on the mizzen battens, after they were done we left them outside on their sawhorses for the caulk to set. The sun was quite warm, and when Suzanne went out later, one of them had been popped out a quarter of an inch – a solar powered popgun! Fortunately it squished right back in, with no problem. We are refraining from drilling holes in the tubing, so they won’t get any water in them – we’ll see how the airtight situation works out over time.

Some folks dispense with plugs entirely, using a machine screw through each end of the batten and a grommet in the appropriate spots in the sail, to hold the sail and batten in place. The trade-off is not being able to adjust for stretch, and potential harsh bits to do with the screws or open ends. I’m also rather fond of the idea of keeping water out of the middles of the battens. So for all the many reasons, we have gone ahead with plugs.

The other issue with junk rig battens is where they come in contact with the mast. This is a potential source of both chafe and noise. People do different things about this, and taking from various peoples’ strategies, we now have both vinyl tubing around a portion of each batten, and seatbelt webbing stitched to the part of the pocket that will rub against the mast. The vinyl tubing, where it was cut, felt like a potential source of chafe. It is surprisingly hard, and a little bit sharp. Carving down all those edges seemed like a potentially difficult and ridiculously time-consuming task, so instead we now have rubber o-rings pushed against the tubing ends, providing a bit of a cushion. These o-rings are from McMaster Carr (nope, not receiving anything) whose website provides detailed descriptions of which materials are suitable for which uses. The orange silicone rubber is good for saltwater – we’ll be finding out how it does with UV, which wasn’t mentioned for any of the choices.

Today we got to start tying the mizzen battens into place, which was enormously satisfying. Small stainless rings are lashed to the forward ends for attachment of batten parrels, which are lines that hold the battens near the mast; the rings will also serve for attaching various bits and pieces to do with other lines that help keep the sail where it belongs front-to-back. The goal is to make rigging on the water, after launch, as simple as possible. Instead of lots of knots that require detailed description for helpers, lines will have quicklink attachments to rings, or other easy connections. The knots that put all this together can be tied here at home, in a more leisurely way, all ready to go when they are needed.

That’s about it for the battens. For those who are looking for scantlings, this aluminum tubing is 1 1/4 inch outside diameter, and 1/16 inch wall thickness. This is roughly correct for the 175 square foot mainsail (following examples found at the Junk Rig Association website), and seriously overbuilt for the mizzen. Going smaller for the mizzen would have only reduced the weight by about four pounds total, and would have been incredibly inconvenient, and expensive, as far as ordering tubing. Going this way, we got one main batten and one mizzen batten out of each 24 foot length. If the mainsail had 12 foot battens this would not have been such an issue, but with 13 foot battens we had to go to the longer length pieces, etc., etc…

Some folks have built a junk rig start to finish in a week – it’s a temptation! But the process we’re in is enjoyable too, and I keep holding the image in my mind of going back out around the outside of Cape Cod – with the whales – and straight across to the central coast of Maine. If this rig works out, it should be a good match for that kind of undertaking. Battens are a substantial piece of the overall project, and it’s wonderful to have them coming together.

junk rig, but which one??

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by shemaya in Junk Rig, the boat

≈ Leave a comment

One of the biggest challenges in doing a junk rig conversion, for me, was the very beginning: deciding which design/sailplan to follow. Reading up, there are a number of choices, and then once a particular design is selected, there are more choices, including sailcloth, batten material and method of attachment, and specifics of overall rigging, as well as the question of camber, which is the curved shape that can be built into a sail, to help with going upwind. My process of resolving those questions went on for years, literally. Now that the selections have been made it’s quite a relief, and it seems time to share what I’ve learned about the deciding factors.

The book Practical Junk Rig, by Hasler and McLeod, provides an overview of the possibilities, and the website junkrigassociation.org has descriptions of those possibilities and more, including recent developments that have come up since Practical Junk Rig was first published in 1987. For a beginning on diagrams and photos, see: http://www.junkrigassociation.org/sailplans_early_days and http://www.junkrigassociation.org/sailplans_current

For a while I thought, oh I’ll just copy what Dave and Anke (at triloboats.com) have on their current boat… until it turned out that I would need something close to a 30 foot mast. Oh well! Then it looked like the Reddish rig, with its traditional character and proven, low-tech possibilities, could be a good fit. For a while there was a detour, and I was intrigued with the split junk rig, designed by Slieve McGalliard – who also did that nice article about yuloh design. I’m still intrigued, but the mainmast on AUKLET is too far forward for that one. Along the way it was pointed out to me (thank you Dave) that the most sail area for the shortest mast would come from the Reddish rig, and making low mast height a priority, in the end I came back and settled on that one.

Things are always so much clearer after the fact, and I now realize that the straightest line through junk rig decision-making (at least for me) is indeed the mast question. Mast height rules out some junk rig designs and enables others, and mast position does the same. Some people change the location of the mast on their boat, but I didn’t want to get into that. With AUKLET, having the mizzen mast provided some room for adjustment as far as location of sail area, so except for considerations with the split junk rig, mast height was really the deciding factor for the overall design. Now here we are, with a Reddish rig in progress.

Then there is the question of size, once the shape of the sails has been decided. Determining sail size is related to mast height, desire for sail area (and what the hull can carry), and locations of booms and sheets, as well as the relationship of the forces on the sails to the forces on the hull. Some tinkering goes into figuring this all out.

In the design process, it’s important to keep the combined center of effort – the “balancing point” where the wind pushes, for both sails – in roughly the same place as for the original rig. Sorting that out for this project involved starting with a scale drawing of the hull and masts, and then making cardboard cutouts, to scale, of potential sails. (It’s probably important that the cardboard is something like what comes inside shirts, and is not corrugated, so there’s no question of uneven weight distribution within layers.) Balancing the cardboard cutout on a pin serves to roughly locate the center of effort for each sail. Then the combined center of effort can be determined by first working out the square footage of each sail (counting squares inside a scale drawing on graph paper helps with figuring this without using big geometry skills.) Next comes drawing a line between the two centers of effort, and measuring along that line proportionally, related to the ratio of the areas of the two sails; this yields the location of the combined center of effort.

We had the original combined center of effort for AUKLET from the plans for the Glasshouse Chebacco, but you could find this from a scale drawing of the original sails, if you needed to, by making another set of cardboard cutouts from the original sail design. We actually did this for the Peep Hen a few years ago, though never took it further than the cardboard stage. However you get it, it’s handy to have the originally designed center of effort so that you can make the center of effort for the new sails line up with the original.

In the end, for the AUKLET junk rig design, Theo and I made an entire array of sizes of cardboard cutout sails, to try out the different possibilities both by eye and for calculated balance. It was pretty entertaining – it felt like being a kid with paper dolls cut out from the Sunday newspaper, but way more fun! Because of the yawl rig, when the potential mainsail pulled the combined center of effort too far forward it was possible to increase the size of the mizzen to compensate. We had everything from a 10 foot boom on the mainsail up to a 14 foot boom, and eventually settled on 13 feet, and a 6 foot boom for the mizzen. (Boom length determines measurements for the rest of the sail.) The sail area for this final arrangement is 175 square feet for the main, and 37 square feet for the mizzen. This is more than the original design, which was 149 and 27 square feet, respectively. Phil Bolger, designer of this boat, used to write about that nobody just sails nowadays, so it’s more appropriate to design sail area for those who motor in light winds, and the Glasshouse Chebacco rig reflects this approach. Myself being a bit of a throwback, as far as the motor question, increasing the sail area has seemed appropriate to the actual use of the boat.

Still, I’ve gone back and forth on the sail area question, and my thinking is continuing to develop, and to change back and forth, on this subject (see writings by Sven Yrvind for reasons for smaller sails). While I was swung toward the “wishing for more sail area” side of things, the time for an actual decision arrived, and now we have a really big sail! Necessitating a mast the height of the original Chebacco design, at 19 feet. These last two years I’ve been sailing with the borrowed short mainmast, which is 16 feet. I like that a lot, especially for things like squeaking underneath closed drawbridges, and the relative ease of stepping and unstepping the mast. Now that the junk sails are built, and the new taller mast is coming soon, I’m committed, but my thoughts keep going back to the benefits of a short mast and smaller sail. It’s a little late for a change, at this stage! It’ll be fascinating to see how the increased sail area feels – worth the compromise of height, weight and bulk? For extra headway in tiny wind? And just how much extra headway? I have no great need for speed, but reliable movement along the shore when the wind is minimal may turn out to be worth the trade-offs.

Regardless of the issue of mast height for the new sail, something had to be done about the overall mainmast situation. The one that I borrowed from the Peep Hen (a much smaller boat) is tapered aluminum, 3 inches in diameter at the base, with 1/4 inch wall thickness. It’s had a good deal of strain and flexing, over these last two years, and there are issues about work-hardening, with aluminum masts, that can lead to breaking. It’s possible that everything is fine, but I haven’t felt confident. As near as I can tell from material on the Junk Rig Association site, appropriate, somewhat conservative scantlings for an unstayed aluminum mast for this situation are 4 inch diameter and 1/4 inch wall thickness in the lower part of the mast, with the diameter tapering higher up. The best I’ve been able to come up with is an aluminum flagpole that is 4 inches in diameter with 3/16 inch wall thickness, tapering above 11 feet to about 2 inches in diameter at the top. Five inches in diameter at the base would be considerably stronger, but won’t fit in the existing partners, and they would be complicated to change. As it is, I think that the 4 inch version will certainly be fine in the early part of its life; if I really love the rig, there is probably another mast change somewhere in the future.

Other big decisions have been sailcloth, and the camber issue. Both of these questions completely stopped my process for a long time also. I originally wanted to go with acrylic sailcloth, such as Sunbrella. This would mean expecting stretch, and because of that, the sail would more closely resemble traditional junk sails in Asia, but would still avoid the mildew issues of cotton. This approach would have been taking a chance, but I rather liked the idea of the adventure. Then Suzanne, with a good practical eye for details of a question, looked at my sample of acrylic fabric and asked “how heavy is that going to be when it’s soaking wet?” That moment was the somewhat sad end of the acrylic idea, but I’m really glad that the question came up before I had a giant, soaking wet sail on my hands, too heavy to move. Maybe not a problem at first, when the fabric still had all its water shedding treatments intact, but surely as time went on.

The other thing that happened about sails is that I came upon a sailmaker with some experience with building “Western” junk sails, on this side of the Atlantic! This would be Stuart Hopkins, at Dabbler Sails. (You can see his work at http://www.dabblersails.com .) Commiserating together on the question of fabric, and on the question of camber, we settled on Dacron sailcloth, and a very small amount of camber in the lower four panels of each sail (stated for the record, Stuart heartily advocated for more camber – if this flatter design doesn’t work out so well, it’s entirely my responsibility!) Above the lower four panels, the top two panels are left completely flat, for heavy weather. It’s an experiment, all the way around, and we’ll see how it goes.

The argument for camber has to do with upwind sailing ability, which has generally been not so good for Western versions of junk rigs with flat sails. I’m intrigued by the theory that “fanned” sails, such as the Reddish rig, also develop camber as they twist. One can opt for an assortment of control lines, following traditional Asian practice, to make adjustments for optimal performance. That does assume that you know what you’re doing… Or are willing to take quite a while to begin to figure it out. But it does seem possible, and I’m looking forward to trying.

Along the way in the planning/design process, I’ve also given up on the idea of bamboo battens, going with the highly recommended aluminum tubing version, in pockets. There is a source of construction-quality (as opposed to garden quality) bamboo in eastern Massachusetts, and I was hopeful for a while. But it turns out that, issue #1, there’s a lot of finish work involved in bamboo battens – wooden plugs for the ends, and varnish, and then, the consideration that really sealed it, issue #2: that the traditional way to make bamboo battens work out well (preventing splitting) is to soak them in seawater for three weeks before beginning the finishing process. (Thank you Lesley, at http://www.huntingjunks.org) Here we are in Holyoke, about 80 miles from the nearest seawater. It could’ve been done, but overall there is the question of exactly WHEN we would like this project to get on the water… So aluminum battens it is, and they are in fact almost complete at this writing.

That’s about it for the major design questions. There are just reams of excellent information available at http://www.junkrigassociation.org and quite a bit of it is accessible to nonmembers. Joining is low cost, and opens up all the rest, including PDFs of all past newsletters. The book Practical Junk Rig, by Hasler and McLeod, is also loaded with outstanding, detailed information. This includes everything from junk rig details, to exactly how to go about making a mast out of a tree from the forest – a real mast, for a big boat. It’s an expensive book, but encyclopedic, in what it covers. (Nope, just like always, not receiving anything for any of the business, organization or book mentions in this post.)

Beyond the design question, there’s the concrete progress. Presently, the sails are complete, and here; yards have been built, epoxied, and painted; the battens are cut to length, and wooden end plugs (turned, grooved, epoxied, and painted) are ready to be caulked in; a belaying pin collar and belaying pins have been made for the mizzen mast, as a place to fasten the zillion lines for the mizzen sail; and mast hardware, loads of line, and assorted other necessary bits, are accumulating in corners. On it goes!

Junk Rig in the Works

15 Thursday May 2014

Posted by shemaya in Junk Rig, the boat

≈ 11 Comments

the goal:

the plan:

Main yard

Mizzen sail – thank you Stuart, sole prop at Dabbler Sails!

Mainsail in progress (now complete)

Not shown:

Tearing apart the forward crossbar of the main tabernacle, to adjust for 2° forward rake of mainmast. Eeek! But it’s coming along.

Why would one do a junk rig conversion:

Click to access 50%20Advantages%20of%20%20Junk%20Rig.pdf

Loads of junk rig resources and info:
http://www.junkrigassociation.org/

Here’s hoping! Will keep you posted…

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Below, in the “comments” section, there is an exchange with a sailor named Martin. Here are a couple of photos of his junk rigged Bolger Micro (check out the fleet!):

Sailing AUKLET

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junk rig, but which one??

Junk Rig in the Works