Desperate to sail 2015

Forgot to add, I you're allowed one more hole, you could make a pivoting leeboard like on this page http://pdracer.com/keel/

Just a single bolt through the board and side of boat, and vertical piece of wood on the inside to reinforce.. It's above waterline right! Simple and effective. Add a little wooden handle to your eyebolt so you can turn it easily by hand to (un)tighten.

 

All right, I tried to squeeze as much sail are as possible, and now have two options for sprit rig. They are both extremes in what I can do with the Tyvek I have (first one is as high as possible, second one is as low as possible) while retaining maximum sail area.

High peak:

Mast height 245cm
Boom length 235cm
Yard length 330cm
Sail area 4.75m^2
CE above waterline 188cm

Screenshot:



Low peak:

Mast height 246cm
Boom length 233cm
Yard length 330cm
Sail area 4.72m^2
CE above waterline 181cm

Screenshot:



So, I have to decide between these two. Which one is better? I'd appreciate any rapid answers, because as soon as I decide, I can start cutting the sail

 

By the way, can someone shed light on how to attach sprit yard to the mast, and yet retain ability to lower the sail (instead of gathering it around the mast)?

 

I like the 2nd one better. Less strain on the Tyvek. More likely to set well.

 

Thank you, sharpii2. If anyone else has any opinions, please do tell. I have delayed work on mast and sail for a day - I want to be sure I'm making the right thing.

 

The sprit attaches to the mast with a line that is known as a "snotter".

This line has one end attached to the front of the mast, higher up than where the sprit is to cross it. The other end goes through the end of the sprit then back to the mast again, where it is cleated. The upper end of the sprit has some way of attaching to the upper aft corner of the sail. By tightening or loosening the snotter, the set of the sail can be adjusted.

The forward top corner of the sail can have a halyard.

To lower the sail in a more conventional way, the snotter can be undone or greatly slacked (I should hav e a lot of extra line for this purpose, if you want to do it this way), or the top of the sprit can be worked out of its connection with the top aft corner of the sail. Then the halyard can be slacked to lower the sail.

As you can probably see, there is a lot of hassle with this system.

A simple braille system will probably work better.

The braille line attaches to the the sprit, goes through a block on the mast then down.

To furl the sail, first slack the snotter then pull on the braille line until the top of the sprit is against the mast, then wrap the sail around the mast.

If your sail has a boom, the braille line can go through an eye on the sprit and attach to the boom. Then you pull on the braille line until the aft end of the boom is against the mast. Then the end of the braille line you have in your hand can be wrapped around the sail several times to bundle it to the mast.

This system speeds the process up considerably.

You could also go with a standing sprit.

With this method, the snotter is a non adjustable piece of line, with one end fixed to the front of the mast and the other fixed to the front of the sprit.
A second fixed line goes from the top of the mast to the aft end of the sprit, to hold it in its upward position. A second halyard is attached to the top of the sprit, to raise that end of the sail and to adjust its tension.

To lower the sail, just relieve both halyards.

 

The more I look through sprit designs, the more it seems to me that lowering it conventional way isn't very popular. If I have to tie sail to the mast, that means boom will also have to be raised up. That puts a lot of weight aloft.

What if the snotter would be tied to one of rings that tie the sail to the mast, passed through the end of the sprit yard, brought back to the same ring where a pulley is attached, passed through pulley and then down to the deck? Would this work? I would raise the sail in conventional way until it is fully tensioned, and only then pull on this yard halyard to tension the peak of the sail.

Does this sound reasonable?

 

the snotter just slides up the mast along with the sail, it is not necessary to lash it solid to the mast.

Although a higher aspect sail is more efficient in terms of thrust and drag, the lower aspect ratio sail would likely be better for your needs. it will hold a higher angle of attack to the wind before it stalls, and the center of effort will be lower, so there will be less stress on your mast and you will not have to shift your body weight as far to the side to balance the sail forces. it will also have less weight, and the weight will be lower.

On simple boats BTW, I have used a single link from a chain or a ring instead of a pulley at the top of the mast. It is simple and less risk of fouling, though there is a more friction of the halyard through it, on smaller sails the extra friction is of little importance. it will allow you to raise or the drop the sail quickly with little risk of jamb or fouling. I just tie it on with a short length of line, usually through a hole drilled through the top of the mast. but you can also cut a grove round the top of the mast and tie it off tightly there to hold it up.

I have also made small dingys with sails that are simply installed on the mast, once up it stays up, to lower the sail you lift the whole mast and sail together and lift it out and lay it down on the boat. not easy to raise and lower when out on the water, but it greatly simplify the rigging. No halyard, no pulley, no means necessary to have the sail slide up and down the mast.

 

After reading sharpii's description I was thinking of something very similar -but I was thinking the snotter ring would be tied to the halyard by a line separate from the sail so it could reef conventionally. The other thought is to just have distinct snotter mounts on the mast for each reef.

Looks like you are making progress. My one other thought is that the angle between the top of the sail and the mast is still tight (and so is the angle between the sprit and the top of the sail) and would result in high tension away from the mast at the halyard. Do what you can to reinforce the sail from the sprit to the halyard.

My last thought is that if you do a braille line it would be good to sew it through holes in the sail from side to side. That way when you yank the braille line the sail is folded in a tight accordion -not half the sail area ballooning and flogging in the wind.

 

Okay, but how does it not slide down when the sail peak is tensioned? Part of the force to to the yard is down...

All right, I kind of expected this. I'll go with lower aspect ratio. Thanks for making clear why!

What about the weight aloft, boom included? I'm worried about that... For example, I sail on my lake, with all these unpredictable winds, and suddenly, gust after gust, I see a storm coming. Will I be able to stow the sail quick enough, and go on with rowing?

How does this look, exactly? Maybe there are some designs which are rigged this way you could show?

I will. I plan to add some one sided, reinforced sticky tape along all the edges, as well as along the yard (to reinforce tensioned part of the sail, and to protect from chafe)

Again, I'm sorry, but due to my poor nautical terminology I have a hard time visualizing what you propose...

 

Laukejas; dousing and storing the sprit sail can be done in seconds. Easy. Loosen the snotter, remove the sprit, wind the sail around the mast. The sail stores easily and safely that way. You can do that quickly if you get caught in a sudden storm.

Winding or unwinding the sail is easy and fast. When the sail is fully furled on the mast, a rope down some where near the bottom of the mast, is wound around the mast a number times. Pull on the rope and the mast will rotate so that the sail is unwound from the mast. A second small rope is now wound around the mast base so that when it is pulled the mast rotates and winds the sail the other direction,onto the mast. This is a simple winch action which works rather nicely. You can do this with only one rope if the middle of the rope is wound around the mast and both ends are led aft so that you can easily reach them. Pull one end to deploy the sail, pull the other end to store it.

The snotter is merely a rope that adjusts the tension in the sprit. Ability to adjust the tension is a good feature. You can adjust the draft of the sail that way. Make the snotter tight and the sail will be flatter, loosen it and the sail will have some belly. You can also control sail twist that way.

A snotter of primitive design consists of a short rope and a longer one. tie a loop into the short one. A bowline knot perhaps. Tie the short one to the mast so that the loop is very near the mast. A couple of clove hitches will do the job. Now tie a loop into the longer rope and thread the loose end through the loop on the short rope. The sprit should be longer than the distance from the peak to the mast by about 15 or 20 centimeters. The sprit will have a notch carved into the end to receive the eye of the longer rope. To adjust the sprit tension just pull down on the long rope and attach it to a cleat or something. The long rope eye will move closer or farther in front of the mast according to adjustment. Fiddle with the snotter tension and you can make a flat cut sail look pretty good.

When fine tuning the rig, you can move the short rope up or down on the mast to satisfy the angle of the sprit to a location that the sail wants.

 

Thanks for the info, messabout. The idea about rotating mast makes sense, but I'm afraid that my current mast step and partner have too much friction to allow smooth rotation provided by these wound ropes. But I'll try it.

I'll do the snotter like you described. Just one thing - maybe I should make a hole in the end of the sprit instead of the notch? I suspect it might be a little more strong and wouldn't fall out if sail were to flog. I know I wouldn't be able to remove sprit from the loop as fast, but when lowering the sail I'd need to uncleat the long line anyway, so I think it wouldn't add any trouble - or would it?

I'll begin work on the sail tomorrow morning. One more question: how does one reef a spritsail? Because I could easily add reef points to it - might be handy if stronger winds are expected. As of now, I can't imagine any way, because the sail can't be lowered in conventional manner.

 

Generally, sprit sails are difficult to reef.

If the snotter is not fixed to the mast and the sail has a halyard system, you can lower the sail untill the butt of the sprit reaches the boom, and bundle up the sail area in between. That is the extent you can reef.

If the snotter is fixed to the mast, a second snotter needs to be set up at the lower location. Its line then needs to run through the hole in the lower sprit end. Having a slot there instead of a hole makes the operation simpler but more risky.

Since you seem to have chosen the snotter that moves up and down with the sail, reefing can be simpler. This, of course, comes at the expense of a lower maximum snotter tension, but the compromise is easy to reverse (you can always change it to a fixed snotter), if it doesn't work out.

You can also reef up, by raising the boom to the butt of the snotter and bundling up the sail area in between. This is how its done with a standing sprit rig.

A very traditional way of reefing a sprit sail is to disconnect the sprit from the top aft corner of the sail. The new effective sail area becomes the triangle formed by the mast and boom. The top portion of the sail then becomes a huge flag. If you have a line attached to this upper rear corner, you can pull it down on the lee side of the sail. You then have to figure out how to reattach the sprit to this top corner, after the high wind ends.

One worry I have with the movable snotter is that it depends on the strength of the sail material itself to hold its vertical position. I fear the Tyvek may not be up to the job and might tear, as a result. If I were to go with that system, I would have a bolt rope on the luff of the sail. I'd even consider running this bolt rope across the top of the sail as well, and have a loop at its end, where the sprit will attach.

 

You won't need reef points! It's a 4.7 sq m sail, barely larger than on an optimist dinghy. You're not planning on 50 knots are you?

I like the second sail option better, lower peak.

Don't worry about halliards, standing sprits etc. You have a removeable mast! lash the sail to the mast and boom. To reef the sail, remove the sprit, fold the boom up so it's parallel to the mast and remove the whole lot and drop in boat! Roll it up to make it more tidy.

Make sure your oars remain useable and present in the boat.

Have you thought about steering? You should make something so you can sit really far forward. This will get as much of the huge transom out of the water as possible. Very important to get this sailing well I think!

 

Thanks for the information, Sharpii2. Well, I guess I'll just try the usual sprit arrangement with fixed snotter and sail lashed to the mast without any halyard. If that doesn't work, I can do something else.

Tdem, for the steering I made a clamp in the transom of the boat (the photo is somewhere in first pages of this topic) with a hole for oar. Idea is that I'll fit in the oar's metal sleeve (no idea what is it called), and use that oar as a rudder. I have already tried it out on the water, it holds tight and steers well.


Well, as always, things take a little bit more time than one estimates (by the factor of 2, usually). I almost finished the sail. I cut it out of my old catamaran sail, overlapped edges with double-sided sticky tape, inserted a line which goes around the perimeter of the sail, reinforced corners with triangle Tyvek sections, reinforced all overlaped edges with one-sided sticky tape, and then reinforced the line along the sprit to add strength and prevent chafe.

Although this was my third Tyvek sail, making it was extremely difficult. I had to work on grass, because there is no flat surface big enough to lay the sail in house. The grass is quite tall and uneven, bumpy. There was a very strong wind today, trying to lift the sail. To add to the joy, all kinds of insects attempted to ruin my work - mosquitoes bit, flies flew around the head all the time, spiders crawled on my back, ants peed on my legs, and harmless beetles tried running through lines of uncovered sticky tape, messing it up in the process.

Nethertheless, the sail is almost finished - all that is left is to rivet luff and head, all the corners are riveted already.

Here are some photos. The first one was made while there was still daylight, it was just after I cut out the new sail out of the old one, and added double-sided sticky tape.
Other two are already at night - I really wanted to finish the sail today, but mosquitoes became unbearable. So I'm sorry for the poor quality. I will probably rig the sail tomorrow, and take better pictures.

P.S. I found this drawing with various lashings. Which one would you recommend?