Desperate to sail 2015

You can see on the picture where the mast is supposed to go, because the yard has a piece of white leather to protect the varnish there. Just in front of the pulley.

 

Thanks, tdem. I managed to get it working. It sets very well, at least with the lines instead of sail. I tried out my lastest lug design, and I think it will work.

I just now need to wait for my old man to return with the boat from fishing, so I can step in the mast and make sure that the boom is clear of all obstacles - and then I'll start working on the sail.

Thank you for the information. I will get back with photos as soon as I have something

 

By the way, does someone know how can I draw on this tent material? I tried pens, pencils, markers, felt-tips, dry soap - nothing leaves a mark. It's very inaccurate to cut without drawing lines first...

 

try chalk or charcoal from the fire place. should work on any cloth with a texture. or you can try little dots of tape if no marker works on it. In ancient times they would use a awl (sharp nail with a handle on it) to punch tiny holes to make a dotted line.

 

Thank you, Petros. I was looking for chalk, but didn't find any. Charcoal didn't work, the surface is too smooth, I guess.
So finally I found soap soft enough to work. Used half a bar, and the lines were 1cm thick, but along with pins where accuracy is required, I made do.

The sail is almost finished, and to my surprise, no dimension is off more than by 1cm. All that remains is adding reinforcements to the corners, and, of course, grommets.

I'm thinking of adding a reef line. With the material being so light, I'm a bit afraid it might tear in high winds, should I encounter them. Having a reef line (only 2 more grommets with reinforcements, because sail is lose-footed) would reduce risk.

Where would I add that reef line? I heard that the ballpark figure is to reduce 30% of previous sail area with each reef. Is that true?

The sail looks like this now:

http://static.dyp.im/8wROTN7Mja/6cef209fa2e6a30f3c51c91c8a4322ad.JPG

Area is 4,5m^2. What would be your recommendations on reef position?

Petros, I'll do corner reinforcements like shown in the screenshot. Having experience with tent material, would you recommend any addition reinforcements, if yes, where?

 

the idea of the reinforcement is to spread the concentrated load around to a larger area fabric. This means you do not just double up the fabric, but you must also anchor or attach the edges of the doubler to the main field of the fabric. This can be done with adheasive, or with duck tape or similar tacky backed tape, or with sewing. I find that you can also reinforce just with duct tape by wrapping a length of tape around corner to be reinforced, and over the back side too. making a star like pattern meeting at the corner where the line will be attached. than put the grommet through the multi layers of duct tape at this corner. It makes a really strong attach point, spreading the load over a large area of the fabric. no sewing required.

 

Thank you, Petros. I did as you suggested, or at least how I understood it!

After some 10 hours of work, the sail is at last completely finished. 4.5m^2, with a reef line to bring that down to 3.15m^2 (30% of the original). 1cm diameter grommets at corners (including reefing corners), and .5cm grommets along head, 31cm apart, and in reef line, 33cm apart. Corners reinforced with 5 to 7 layers of tent material and sticky tape.

Although the sail isn't completely flat, it is way better than I did last time. With material being so stretchy, I guess it will be fine.

Here are some photos. Later I lashed it to the spars, but it was too dark to take more. Please zoom in for better look of corner reinforcements - they are not easily seen!

http://static.dyp.im/zF0PgMCBug/f9018a01e068dab7eb737fceb04b1a7e.jpg
http://static.dyp.im/kboNexehRz/a6f0272b135c4044c61646b56fe60136.jpg
http://static.dyp.im/u2UuSZ2QVV/481dfe8c09ccacff66244fe1e9c7fa32.jpg
http://static.dyp.im/qJrPe2leUt/667a8cc072ab9bc9e00eb65164239991.jpg

Tomorrow we have a storm coming in. 27 knot wind with gusts. Never a better time to try out if this thing holds together...

I would appreciate any comments on the sail!

 

that is exactly what I had in mind, you can also put several layers of the tape on both sides in the corner to strengthen and stiffen it.

It is important that the grommet also grabs the tape since it would do little to have it only through the one layer of tarp fabric. I have found btw, that a grommet is not really necessary if I have a piece of plastic or thin plywood under the tape reinforcement, and the hole is drilled through the tape and the plywood gusset. it does a nice job of spreading the load out and it also stiffens the sail so it does not pucker or bunch up around the attach point. I have also uses a staple gun to put more attachment between the plywood gusset and the fabric, but I think caulk adhesive works better.

what you have should work. If the grommet pulls out try adding a wood or plastic gusset in the corner. the ones I made were only about six inche triangle (15 cm) cut to fill the corner of the sail.

 

Thanks, Petros. I can always add something else to the sail, but I hope to get away with minimum.

Well, the gods are making fun of me. I departed against the wind; I returned against the wind. And of the promised 27 knot storm I had 1-3 knot wind with occasional gusts up to 20 knots.

The sail works way better than the previous one. I can go about 60-70° to windward in light winds, and up to 40° in 20+ knots.

I think I could do better if the sail were to set better. Right now, even though it is nearly flat, there are some wrinkles running from sheet corner to the middle of the yard. Especially in light winds. They kind of separate sail into two bags.
Didn't take camera with me, so I sketched these wrinkles:



I tried adding and releasing tension of outhaul, but it doesn't affect it.

I guess I could install something like 5 layers of material (or some plastic/plywood) in triangle shape to that corner so that it would distribute loads more evenly. But maybe there is some better solution?

 

Well, the gods heard my whining, and said - you talk too much... And then they brought down the sky with all their might on my little boat as I was departing for the second time today.

Now, I'm not one for horror stories, but this storm deserves special mentioning. Several years ago, I was sailing with my friend on his dinghy "Fortepiano" in another lake in Lithuania, during competition regatta. There was a 30 knot wind with minor gusts, and that day we broke the rudder, shredded the sail, and finally broached. Never reached the finish line.

What I experienced today makes these memories seem like a day in a park. The wind transcends it's own definition, and it's strength eludes words trying to describe it. When I started from my little harbor which is in narrow branch of the lake, the wind was varying from 15 to 25 knots. I went unreefed. However, when I reached the opening, where the branch connects to the main mass of the lake, the winds went crazy. I cannot even tell what the speeds were like, because I have never experienced anything like this before. I never realized such wind was possible. My eyes went blurry when I tried to look upwind, and my glasses almost flew away went I turned downwind. The wind was literally roaring like some kind of devilish beast, and it felt like it was almost saturated, viscous. In Lithuanian, we call such wind what translates to "semolina", because of how tangible it is.

Even in lake such as small as this, whitecap waves started to form, and they threw my little 3 meter boat up and down as I was trying to maintain control. The wind carrying spray from these white waves didn't help too. It was too late to reef: I was afraid that if I stopped hiking, the boat would topple over. The mainsheet was set to 6:1 ratio, and it took all my strength to hold it. The boat reached incredible speeds, and on some gusts almost started planning. It clearly went beyond hull speed, because it literally sliced through the water with white spray and wake waves. The bow cut through the waves like a bulldozer, splashing liters of water into the cockpit, and the transom created an empty pocket behind the boat. The line which goes round the hull to hold the daggerboard box started vibrating so loudly that it could be mistaken for a motor, and the whole boat started to shake violently in it's effect.

You'd think that wind of such strength would be consistent in direction, right? Wrong. Imagine a 35+ knot wind which changes direction in matter of seconds, by no less than 180 degrees. Yes, that's right. I just pointed the bow in the direction I'm going, and in matter of minutes I went through every possible wind course possible - from close-hauled to running, and the boat just kept going with the wind dancing around. When the wind turned dead ahead, I realized it's not worth trying to bear away - the boat didn't have enough time to stop, and the wind changed direction again. Just for a matter of fun, I counted how many tacks I made during this leg, and later calculated that I made around 4 tacks a minute, that is every 15 seconds. Most of these (if not all) were involuntarily.

Now, the worst part is that no matter what I did, I couldn't flatten the leech. The most tensioned part went from clew to around 40-50cm from the peak, but not to the peak itself. Therefore, even I sheeted in all the way, the leech would flap in the wind in extremely rapid manner. At gusts, it fluttered so fast that I could hear a note produced by these vibrations. I thought it would flog itself to death with such poor material, but I was wrong. The sail survived with no visible damage.

I can totally vouch for this fabric. It survived the most horrifying conditions I can think of - varying winds in excess of 35 knots (my rough estimation, it could be more), random direction gusts, flapping in the most horrific way a sailor can imagine, and being stretched to limits while propelling very non-hydrodynamic boat. All that without reefing.

I returned to port downwind, and luckily enough, I managed to find a sail shape fine enough so that the sail would flutter, sat at transom, and let the boat fly, as it vibrated and shook violently from the line beneath the hull.

After a careful inspection, I was amazed to discover that nothing was damaged. Every part stood up to the task, and although during this trip I saw things that no man should ever see, all was well in the end.



Here is the end of this story. Tomorrow I will take a passenger: we'll see if the boat will be able to get to windward with much higher displacement. There will be photos.

Now, if anybody can answer this within 15 hours, I would very much appreciate it. I want to fix the sail, I mean the wrinkle that goes from clew to 40-50cm away from peak.

Here is a rough sketch of where the wrinkle is located (drawn in red):



I have absolutely no idea why the highest tension is along this line, instead of the leech. After all, I made a inward cut on the leech, so that it would stretch fabric along it as it tries to become straight.

I tried moving halyard up higher on the yard (and moving sail forward in effect), but it seems to make little difference, and there is only as much I can move it before I'm out of mast length, and the boom starts beheading me.
I also tried various downhaul tensions, as this is considered the most important line on the lug rig, but it made little difference.

I hate to ask again, after you guys helped me so much already, but if anybody could suggest something... It would help me out so much. I promise more stories and photos

P.S. I just checked with Beaufort scale descriptions just now, and what I experienced matches wind force from 6 to 8 - that is fresh gale... Doesn't surprise me: I rode car later today, and saw no less than 3 uprooted trees, lying on the road...

 

Wow, what an adventure, you must be glad you took your time during construction now! You didn't mention steering difficulties, so you think the new sail improved balance?

I would try playing with the ties that hold the sail to the yard. If you have a continuous lacing, try replacing it with individual ties, one at each grommet. Make the ones at the head and peak really tight, and the ones inbetween looser, especially the one where the wrinkle starts at the top.

 

Indeed I'm glad! When I finished constructions, I thought like, "I really overdid it this time...". But after today, I changed my mind!

As for the steering, it did require considerable effort at such wind speeds. Luckily, I moved daggerboard forward, so to induce slight weather helm.
But it ain't perfect. Strange thing is that in low wind speeds, I get lee helm, and quite strong. However, in strong winds, I get weather helm, also considerable. What's strange is that sheeting angle and angle to the wind are the same. It's just the wind speed that changes the helm balance. I don't quite understand this.

I'll try different lashing. But it seems to me that the problem isn't just here...

 

It is not surprising that lee helm, weather helm, occurs at different wind velocities. A high priced expertly cut and expertly set sail does not display that characteristic very much. Almost any low end sail may behave in that same manner. The center of effort of the sail does move around some. On a small boat it does not take much movement to change the feel of the tiller.

It is likely, more than likely, that the helm will change with different headings. Ideally you'd want just a hint of weather helm when going to windward. Weather helm will normally increase as you bear off more and more downwind. I suspect that you have figured this out already. If not, then consider that when boomed out, the pressure on the sail CE is like a lever that tries to turn the boat upwind. The stronger the wind, the more powerful the lever.

You got a taste of adventure in the high winds that you encountered. That your sail and spars survived is a testament to your building skills. In addition to that I also suspect that the wind gods took some mercy on you because you have worked so hard to make all those parts and adapt them to a boat that was never intended as a sailboat. Cheers!

 

I would say congratulations to you are in order. You cobbled together a make shift sailboat with less than quality materials, and used it in conditions that would damage many "factory" boats, and not only had no failures, but it sounds like were able to reasonably control it, keep it upright, and bring it back in one piece, in those conditions. On a hull that was not even designed to be a sailboat.

That my distant friend, is not an easy accomplishment even for experienced boat builders. Those conditions would keep most experienced sailors indoors, let alone out on a the water in a make-shift boat!

Good for you!

I guess extra reinforcement on the sail was not necessary after all. That in itself is remarkable, I have seen production sails pull out grommets and tear in the reinforcement areas after a rough day at sea. I guess I would not expect it last very long, a summer or two perhaps. But once you sort out the design details, they are cheap and fairly fast to make a replacement when that one become to haggard and weathered to trust.

Half the fun is the building and experimenting, and clearly you have become much better at that than last year. A few more years like that, you will be an expert at cobbling together a sailboat from any pile of junk.

 

Messabout, Petros, thank you for your compliments. It really means much, coming from you. And this adventure really feels like an achievement. When I remember that years ago, I started with a plastic bottle raft rigged with sail... Quite a difference now.

Messabout, that's interesting what you say about helm changes when using poor-quality sails. Does that have anything to do with bias elongation? Could you please explain how exactly does this helm change with different wind speeds?



And, can someone share any more advice on the sail shape issue I mentioned earlier, with the sketch? How do I tension the leech without the wrinkle that goes from clew to the yard, 40-50cm from the peak?