CNC Plans not Included

A ballestron rig has a whole set of compromises also. The biggest drama with them has always been excessive weight. Rob denny was one of only a handful of people to use them successfully in recent times and even he has dropped the idea in his latest designs.
A ballestron rig of the size your looking at is going to consume a shed load of carbon amd it will weigh hundreds of kilos. I think rob dennys rig was approx 120kg iirc - and it was only 12m tall and used $5000 worth of carbon alone. The laminate at the bottom of the mast had a ~1/2in wall thickness. Your rig at approx 20m tall will be at least triple that weight- probably more. Youll need a professional engineer to design it 1 oft for you - more $$$. Its a huge task to manufacture it and the bearings and support structure around it etc.
Much easier and lighter with a typical modern synthetic stayed rig- takes 1 hour to layup a composite chainplate for each shroud and is a very efficient structural design. Dynex synthetic rigging is light and diy friendly, and costs less than stainless wires nowdays. You cam still build your own mast if you want to- or simply buy an alum one- ay least you have the option.
Take your time and think about it...
For the record, my personal opinion is that youd be crazy to opt for a ballestron rig...

 

Save your self a lot of expense and trouble here;
SMG 50 'Ayoba' For Sale - SMG 50 For Sale at https://www.seaindependent.com/yachts/491/smg_50.html

 

Nice boat but very different from what's going on here. My boat is all electric with a huge solar roof, sailing and hauling along diesels and gensets and fuel doesn't appeal to me at all.

Skip, The Freedoms and Wyliecats are well liked boats and they made it work. I have seen pics of some with small jibs, the comments I read on those were mixed and vague. I think I would opt for a taller mast since the idea is to keep it simple but since I don't know jack about rigs the best I can do at this moment is lay the boat out to be able to handle either stayed or unstayed.

Freedom with two sails
FREEDOM 38 sailboat specifications and details on sailboatdata.com http://www.sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_id=763

 

Whats up with these unstayed soft wing sails by Beneteau, in comparison race against exact same boat but with conventional rig, the wing won on every point of sail.

Interesting Sailboats: BENETEAU WING SAIL ALMOST READY FOR THE MARKET http://interestingsailboats.blogspot.com/2014/05/beneteau-wing-sail-almost-ready-to.html

 

Seems pretty self explainatory from the test results...

Was slower on all points of sail except downwind- until a spinaker was raised on the conventional rig when it became slower on that point also!

Now just ask them for the price and the deal/fate is sealed...

 

Am I reading the article wrong? looks like the wing won?

1st race - 8/10K wind, 25m race, the wing sail won by 20s.
2nd race - 10/12K wind, 20m race, the wing won by 30s.
3rd race - 12/14K wind, 18m race, the wing won by 14s.
4th race - 13/15K wind, 17m race, the wing won by 60s.

 

Interesting ... perhaps the shape of my roof should be in the shape with the lowest coefficient, 2nd from bottom, I wonder if it would make sense to have winglets or are the speeds to low to make a difference?

 

Read the article...
It won because of 10% faster on the downwind leg only. They didmt allow spinaker on the conventional rig but when they did it was faster downwind also... see the freestanding rig cant carry a spinaker. So if you remove all limitations, the conventional rig wins. Clevet spin to sell to those who cant be bothered sailing the boat but rather have ease of sail handling...

 

ok I see, how stupid.

 

We changed to schooner rigs because we wanted the open space in the lee hull, to give more sail area for the mast height and to make shunting easier for novices. Ballestrons work well and are ideal for cruisers or shorthanded sailing.
Upwind performance is affected by the jib luff sagging. Solutions are to recut the jib and/or increase the clew force with more outhaul/downhaul, loading up the topping lift or adding a set of runners from the boom to the hounds. Camber spars and jib booms have also apparently been successful, but I have not seen the need on any of the rigs we have built.

Not quite. The mast in the video is 17.5m long, weighs 120 kgs. About the same as an alloy mast with ss wires on a cat with the same rm (18 tonne metres) and mainsail luff length (15m). We used glass for the off axis loads, would have saved 15 kgs if we had used carbon. The thickness at the deck bearing is 18mm as we did not know how to reliably put a bulkhead in there. Now we do, so it will be 12mm wall for the bottom 3.5m, tapering to 3mm near the top. This is a further weight saving.
I can't remember what carbon cost then, and have not bought any for a couple of years when the 60 odd kgs of carbon tow in the mast cost $USUS22/kg, so $1,320 for the mast. Uni was $30/kg. Pretty sure both are cheaper now. The ballestron boom weighs about one third of the mast.

Probably less than double. Depends on the righting moment.

About a thousand US dollars if we do it. Cheaper than the engineering for a carbon stayed mast which is also required.

Part of the Bucket List build was developing a simple mast building technique that requires neither moulds or mandrels, and includes bulkheads. This is now included in the Intelligent Infusion plans.
The support structure is pretty simple, far easier than forebeams, longerons, mast beams taking several tonnes load in the centre, traveller beams, chainplates and their bulkheads. I doubt it would add more than 20 kgs to the structure Jorge has drawn.
Bearings can be pricy, about the same price as the rudder bearings. If the boat is designed for it, oversize plain plastic bearings at a couple of hundred dollars each will do the job. An added advantage of oversize bearings is the ability to rake the mast forward, moving the coe forward and reducing the sheet loads on a cat rigged boat.

To each his own. My opinion is that he would be crazy to put a stayed rig on anything but a sole use race boat. And I have raced and cruised on both types. ;-) As has Richard Woods who said "Easy sailing: The sails are always working correctly, whatever point of sail. Maybe it would be better to say the rig works to 95% efficiency all the time. A conventional rig may work to 100% if you're an expert, but only 70% if you're not."
The small loss of upwind performance against a skilled and dedicated race crew is a tiny price to pay for the ease of use, lack of maintenance and worry that is inherent in an unstayed rig.

One of the big speed losses on cruising stayed masts is fear, caused by the knowledge that it is impossible to depower the rig beyond 90 apparent. So most cruisers reduce sail at night and in squally conditions. An unstayed rig can be completely depowered in seconds, regardless of the wind angle or strength, simply by releasing the mainsheet. Not only does this depower the rig, but once depowered, there is no flogging headsail* or sheets to worry about. Thus, there is no need to reduce sail. You can sit quietly with just as much power as you need until the squall passes. This would be a huge plus sailing in the Med where sudden strong winds out of nowhere (mistral, bora, meltemi , etc) are an ever present worry.
*The no headsail point does not apply to a ballestron, but it is much easier to lower the jib if it is pointing directly into the wind (as opposed to blowing over the bow).

Re mast location.
Instead of moving the mast forward, you can move the board aft.
It is not necessary to place biplane masts in the hulls. They could be above the inside edge of the hull, leaving the hulls clear and also providing walk through space on the bridgedeck to the foredeck.[/QUOTE]

 

I love listening to everyone's opinions, what I am finding is that all are valid and it's most important to understand the perspective of how people intend to sail to determine what is right for me. Here is a very good writeup of Hughs Sarabi with Ballestron rig. It includes some structural design notes with illustrations that were helpful and a comment from the owners of Sarabi surprised how well she would sail upwind.
56' Cruising Cat w/AeroRig https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/32587597/56-cruising-cat-w-aerorig

Edit- also found this one by Rob Denney, even though you are posting here Rob, I like to have all info on this thread to refer back to.

Proafile | Rig Options - Balestron http://proafile.com/archive/article/rig_options_balestron

 

yeah and dont forget this to go with the above info, perhaps unstayed rigs need maintenance too
Sarabi Dismasted http://multihullblog.com/2015/01/sarabi-dismasted/

Id try and find out how much they spent on that rig, and how noisy the bearings were as it moved in a seaway, and how many years it sat on the market for sale also complete financial disaster that boat...

 

I posted on the blog asking if there are any updates. I know that Forespar has some bad reviews, think it was Richard Woods or Sponberg who said he couldn't recommend them anymore but I cannot find that post now. I don't think this is an issue with Aerorig in general because most of the reviews are positive but my research will continue.

 

That's weight including boom and all else so how does that compare to a stayed mast with boom all the rigging and sails etc etc