Minuet Yachts: a 2m fun boat-can the design be improved?

Ac 4.5

Thanks for the last one-that's a good find-hadn't seen it before.
RC, I'm not sure how much you follow design trends but have you seen the Mini's(21') with the full round bow?
This design- rather unbelievably- has beaten all the pointy bow boats repeatedly.
Last picture below is the Dyer Dhow dinghy like the one I first learned to sail in. Look at the bow shape compared to the Mini-kinda startling.

 

Doug, I was aware of them but didn't know about their performance improvements. That is definitely something to consider.
To be honest, they look rather ugly at first, and that takes away a lot of the appeal of the pocket yacht.

Have you seen these? http://www.miniopen.de/
They have a retractable bulb keel, twin rudders, and twin daggerboards!

 

I thought it was some sort of joke when I was first made aware of David Raison's Mini which was like a scaled up Dyer Dhow. However, both upwind and downwind the boat won against the best pointy bows. Now it's all the rage. The newest Mini design is a narrow DSS equipped boat-much narrower than a standard Mini.
PS- I've seen the mini Opens..

 

I think they might be onto something with the new mini 6.5. I'm impressed!

 

So I took her out again yesterday. This time I used the 170 genoa (Red) because the wind was so light. Drifted around in the marina for about 2 hours. Now that the hull and steering is sorted out, it's on to the sail rig. She is seriously under-powered. I never realized how fast sunfish are, until they are passing me like I'm standing still.




With the new floor, I can sit a few inches lower. If I really slouch, I can make my head completely disappear!

 

I got a chance to push the envelope a lot more yesterday with some higher winds. They were shifty but toward the end was a pretty steady 10-20 mph.
I got to use three headsails (170, 120, and storm jib) with both the topsail up and down.

As for the rig, I would still recommend a little more sail area than the full rig that I have now, but not by much. I would say maybe a 10 ft mast with a square main and a jib would be good, but it must be easy to feather out in 20 mph of wind or reef down to a managable size, and fast.

Enjoy the footage!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgQN9-4_gP4

 

Thanks for the video.

Sweeping power out of the sky has always been a precarious job because power is proportional to velocity squared and wind speed and direction vary so much. That is why keel boats have been popular so long. Higher wind is actually easier to sail in because the variation in force is smaller and you don't have to reach as high to get the force you need. That is why my next boat will be a 10ft paddle sailor that transitions to sail at 5 to 7mph. Below 5mph it is just way easier to paddle and over 7mph paddling is a chore.

For fast furling sail area you can't beat roller furling. You could do a big (relative) roller furling genoa and keep a large but flat main that is easy to handle and feather in strong winds.

I think I mentioned it before but Mat Layden's little cruising skiff designs are putting a lot of miles under their keels and they are almost as small as your boat but with less righting. The trick is that they have big, low aspect, roller furling sails.

http://www.microcruising.com/Enigma.htm

 

I tried out the new rig and mast today! It's wonderful. Quite a bit more power! A little more heeling moment but it isn't bad. I need to get a proper jib made for it, and a big huge drifter on the bowsprit.

Here she is scooting to windward. I'm leaning to leeward to make the boat heel.


Racing my buddy's Catalina 27, Miakoda.

 

Congratulations, RC!

 

Bowsprit and rigging is done. I'm working on getting a drifter and a proper jib made.
https://scontent-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/h...213_977383522300190_2369411763246643688_o.jpg

 

Took the Pocket Yacht out Friday and Saturday, and have lots of pictures to show for it! I never left the marina, because it was too rough outside, but I had lots of fun anyway! Got to try out both reef sets and the storm Jib! Once she gets heeled over far enough you just lose rudder control and she rounds up. I never got water inside the cabin, although I got the windows buried a few times.

Fully hoisted sails


Single reef and radial fractional jib. The main is NOT backwinded, the horrible shape is from the batten.


Single reef, notice water level in the leeward window and angle of hanging phone.


Rail well under! Double reefed main and radial jib


Cruising along, double reefed main.


Cruising along under storm jib and storm(double) reefed main.






Wing on wing!


Next morning, messing around with the sunfish. No reefs, light wind.


As for the rig, this is the first reef:

And the second reef:



What do you guys recommend for battens? The ones I have give it horrible shape. They tend to get an affinity for whatever curvature they were stored in, and the middle lower one (in white) develops a nasty shape, where it curves first one way, then the other, then back, then back again. The middle upper batten(in the blue) gets almost no curvature along the luff, and it's all concentrated at the leech. The top two battens are perfectly straight(they are thicker).

 

Battens can be made from straight grain wood -emphasis on straight grain -preferably to the extent that each tree ring visible at one end can be followed to the other end. I am at a loss for how you got the shape in these pictures short of putting spaghetti noodles in compression. You could start stiff and plane them down. You can thin down the luff end to make it curve more than the leach. When you have have the flex you want put some finish on to slow water absorption -particularly the end grain.

It looks like you do not have a track on the mast so you might not be able to shape the main in conventional ways.

It is good to see you finally got to test your boat in righting limited conditions. Did the boat safely handle being overpowered? You mention rounding up when knocked down -what was the angle of heel when the rudder lost control?

Do you have estimates now for the wind speed of each reef? One thought I had was that a jib boom would be very helpful to stop the jib from powering up when you ease the sheet -it's a common problem on narrow boats. The key to righting limited sailing is the ability to feather very flat sails effectively. The sunfish is a fine example -near zero righting but a large flat sail that can be feathered for balance.

 

I think I'm going to try some sort of tapered battens. What I have in there now are strips of corruplast (looks like cardboard but is plastic) under tension, but they don't do the job right at all. The top two are thicker corruplast and are so stiff they don't flex at all, which is acceptable for the very top, but the bottom ones must have that curvature.

I am considering attaching a luff track to the outside of the spar to simplify dealing with reefing when you have a fractional rig and a sleeve luff. I really don't like the upper luff stiffener and retaining strap I have to attach to keep the upper luff connected to the mast when reefed. Works great when not reefed though!

As for the power, it handled it fine. After you get used to being on your side, it feels completely safe and comfortable even when knocked way over (75+ degrees). At about 20 degrees, you start to feel the weather helm. At about 35, it starts to get pretty heavy, and around 50, you pretty much lose most of the steering control. The rail never stays under until around 60, so you only get water over every little bit after about 35 degrees. The skin on frame wraparound I did on the rear end of it did a great job of keeping the water out. I felt a few splashes on my shoulder from water splashing up the wooden blocks at the front of the wraparound, but it was never underwater. A few months ago I did a pulldown test at the dock. I had a friend hold the mast down. We got it down to about 80 degrees, and he said the water was about 1/4 inch from the corner above the rear wraparound cover. After letting go of the mast, it took just under a second to go vertical again.

Wind speeds and the reef... It started out at about 5 mph, and I had the full sails up, then it kicked up to probably about 15 mph, so I reefed the main one reef, and left up the fractional radial Jib. I reef the main before the Jib to compensate for weather helm. Later, the wind increased to about 18, so I double reefed the main, and with gusts up to the high 20s, I also put up the storm Jib. I had enough power to bury the rail with the storm reef and storm jib, but it felt very easy to control and I think it would work alright up to around 35 mph of wind. Mind you, this was all on flat water as I was sailing in a marina the entire time. I thought about a self tacking Jib, but I feel it's easier to just have two sheets and deal with the power as I need to. I currently have 7 headsails for the pocket yacht, and plan on making at least two more. I don't have space to store the booms for them, or a good way to switch the sails out with a boom attached.

If you are really really curious and want to see the footage of it sailing, It's all on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnuD1PZOmxbp8DV1MY7vZ-Q

 

A luff track and roller furling onto the boom would be a very slick setup. Another way to go would be a gunter rig main on the short mast you had before with the forestay to the top. For the jib I would favor a self tacking jib on a boom you could just leave up all the time and an overlapping genoa on a roller furler ahead of it. The goal would be a sail setup you could adjust to any conditions while seated.

What I find exciting about this boat is it's potential as a rental to people who have never sailed before. The ability to keep the crew safe and fairly dry is unique among small sail boats. The boat could have different sail plans for different conditions and experience levels. The simplest would just be a lanteen on up to a cutter described above. With a waterproof mount for their smartphone they could have a skype session going for instruction or thrash talk. The 2.4 and little AC boats are targeted at experienced sailors with their high price and complex scaled rigs. I would like to see more done to get people to sail for the first time just because it is fun.

 

That's not really the design brief of this boat at all. Having sailed it, I would tell you right now I would not trust a beginner with this boat. Maybe it's just the prototype-bugs not ironed out yet, etc. I don't know. It feels and sails exactly like a Catalina 27. A bit heavy on the helm, and if you sail into a shallow rocky area, just as easy to get into trouble. You can't hop out and push the boat away from the rocks. You're stuck in your little half-shell with the big lead keel hanging down below you, and your only option is to raise the keel some and try to sail off the shore. The safe and dry though, that is a valid point, although I would want more ballast and a bit longer, at least 10 feet, if I was going to do that. Starting to look more like a 2.4 meter, with the handicapped sailors! That being said though, you could make a rental boat that would work well! My passion is more for the high-end technical boats, I don't really want anything to do with the big fat slow heavy plastic rental boats that don't have dagger boards, no jib, etc.

I've tried the gunter rig and a gaff with a topsail. I can already change out any and every sail (except completely removing the square top main) without moving from my seated position.