Alternative sail rigs

[bfrowe]

I visited the Proafile to learn about Bruce foils, but came away with thoughts of crab claw sails and their higher efficiency. Could the cc be made to tack instead of shunting?
Bruce Rowe

[Skippy]

Originally Posted by bfrowe

Could the cc be made to tack instead of shunting?

I'm not sure why that website says the crabclaw is "shunted". The yard always leads and the boom always trails, they don't switch places aerodynamically speaking. So I would say the rig does tack. But it's not very weatherly. The Gibbons rig and the Bolger rig both shunt. The Gibbons rig is supposed to be excellent for small boats that don't have to reef, but I've read the Bolger rig is hard to handle when shunting. Probably all on that site.

[bfrowe]

It is very possible that I was confused as to the proper nomenclature regarding the handling of the crabclaw. I assumed that if one was using a cc on a proa, it would need to "shunt" to change tacks since that is what proa's do. What I was trying to find out was whether the cc could be used on a non-shunting boat where the sail would travel through the eye of the wind on tacks.

[Skippy]

I like that site's discussion of rig types (several links in the 2001 section). I hadn't realised there were so many. There's a catamaran on the
crabclaw page, and there's one (on paper) in the Boat Design forum.

Actually, you can just google "crab claw" catamaran. There are a bunch of them. They all seem to have A-frame masts. Here are the first three links I saw:
http://rclandsailing.com/catamaran/
http://www.shellboats.com/sbcrabclawcat.html
http://www.messingaboutinboats.com/a...ovember98.html