Desperate to sail

Nice work! can't wait to see pictures of the completed rig installed.

The type of sail you described is a Gunter rig, similar to a gaff but the gaff pivots at the mast rather than slides down it, folding the sail rather than lowering it. A good simple set up for smaller boats.

that mast looks a bit small for a cantilevered mast, but it should work okay with stays.

I think pine will work fine, you have to learn the limitations of the materials you are working with. anything and everything has be used to build boats, even bamboo. It is just a matter of designing for the properties of the materials you are using. If you are at risk of splitting you can tightly wrap the part with string or duck tape.

You have to put a metal tip on the bow drill to get to cut wood, forcing your way through it risks spliting as you learned. the bow is just a means to get a shaft to rotate, it is traditionally used to heat the tip to make fire, but it has been used to drill holes if a tip with a sharp edge is fixed to the end of the shaft. A knife with a sharp point lashed to the shaft might make a suitable drill, the sharp edge of the blade with shave off the sides of the hole. It will not make a small hole, but it will drill a clean one. If you can find a drill bit for an old hand auger, or even a modern drill, and find a way to attached it, it should work with the bow to spin it as well.

 

You can make a drill bit exactly the size you need by hammering nails flat on the end and sharpening them. They would be like spade bits, similar to the top one shown below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drill_bit

 

I like the fixed gaff idea.

by simply letting the gaff droop and pulling it to the lee of the sail left standing (from the throat to the clew) you will have effectively reefed your sail. All you need is a line from the end of the gaff down to the base of the mast, so you can control it after relieving the peak.

I can't wait to find out how well it all works.

Congratulations on some fine improvisation.

 

Well,

It was a failure. An utter, miserable, complete failure. Nothing works. Without mast step, mast swings more than 15 degrees to the side at gusts (I'm afraid to tension stays more, since they are attached to the rail, and the rail might break). Sail doesn't get in shape, I can't tension halyard enough. Sail is oversized - it spans almost the whole length of the boat and protrudes at the back - I had to hold clew with my hand, no way to attach sheet to the boat without ruining the shape of the sail. Leeboard lashing system doesn't work - both leeboards don't stay upright and in right orientation. Oar-rudder works more or less, but moves around the pivot point and rolls on it's sides.
The only thing that is actually good is that boat is stable even for this 8m^2 sail.

Wind was stable and strong, but with all the problems I mentioned and me lost in 50 meters of rope, boat hopelessly drifted most of the time. Few times I managed to get maybe 60 degrees from TWD, although nose pointed to some 45 (I think). So, that's a lot of drift.

But the worst thing is that it took me about 1.5 hours to rig the boat - mostly because of the missing mast step - and I couldn't do it alone, I had someone to hold the mast for me while I lashed it to the seat and tensioned the stays. When I had to lower the mast on the water to be able to sit and row, it fell and almost broke the boat. What I mean is that mast is way too heavy to handle. Maybe, with mast step, I could raise it by tensioning the halyard (with shrouds already tied at correct length)...

However, I'm not about to give up. However, I'll have to forget my gaff sail, and go with 3.12m^2 genoa, using it as main. At least I'll be able to actually control it, and there are less lines involved.
Only thing I'm afraid of is that it might be too small to move this boat upwind. It has 3.9m leech, 1.6m foot and 3.8m luff. What do you think? Is it large enough?

For leeboards, I'll certainly have to use clamps. There is no way for ropes to hold them in place.

The main headache is that mast. I can't shorten it, because my genoa has even longer leech than gaff. I have to make mast step somehow.

Could anyone please suggest anything? Anything that I could make with the tools I have? I just need something for the base of the mast, something to hold that end in place. I'll hold mast upright with stays, but I can't have the base sliding around. Lashing to the seat is too problematic.

Any suggestions?

 

My attempt - a removable mast step:



The structure is made of wood planks and uses the forward seat and the floor grating as supports.

The rectangular slot seen in the top-left view from above should be slightly smaller than the mast diameter, to create an interference and clamp the mast firmly.

The rope should be tightly wound (maximum tension you can create) along the whole height of the mast step.

The whole piece could be fixed to the seat with tightly stretched ropes.

Should be pretty simple to make, with basic tools.

Cheers

 

I like that. While you were developing yours, I was cobbling this together, although the wood grain is 90 degrees off.:

 

Yeah, your idea is similar to mine.
I have tried to avoid big circular holes in the planks, not knowing if Laukejas has tools to make them. Also, it is imo important to let the structure go all the way down to the grates, in order to give the mast step a bigger lever arm against heeling forces from sails.

 

The idea I was trying to convey was that 2 boards bolted onto the thwart could be done without making a hole in the borrowed seat.

The shape of the hole is only a representation of the idea. Square would probably be better to keep the mast from twisting.

Lacking a drill, the hole could be made with fire and shaped with a knife to the right size after burning through the board.

Your drawing is better because it offers more lateral support.

Heating an old tire iron in a charcoal fire would allow more control of the burning but you must be careful not to burn yourself. Use heavy leather gloves to pick up the crooked end.

 

daiquiri, this looks very simple and good. I'll attempt to build it, if I find enough materials. I don't have tools to make round cuts, I'm not even sure how to remove that "back" side from the top plank, since it's not accessible with saw, unlike the sides. Maybe I'll think of something.

Also, I'm thinning mast right now with an axe in attempt to lighten it - I think mast was oversized in diameter for that 8m^2 sail, so for 3m^2 I'm pretty sure it's safe to remove a centimeter or two.

 

Too bad you do not have a machete, or a fancy back woods ax.

If it is a single bladed ax, you can use it as an adze and use a hammer or stone to get more precise strips cut off.

Can you sew your sails down a little smaller to make them easier to handle?

I know you want upwind ability, but it sounds like a lot to handle right now.

Wayne

 

A piece of rubber, or something like it, might keep the base of the mast from sliding, as it provides much more friction.

I would also suggest you make a boom for your original sail.

That would eliminate a lot of your problems by making the sail hold a decent shape. Boomless sails have to be tall in relation to their width, to get decent sheeting angles. Otherwise they just bag and create only drag.

Also, a boomed sail has lower sheet tensions.

 

Oh, it doesn't have a boom?

Then I would think about something like a latin sail, an old and proven technology which alows the sail to be tensioned at proper sheet angle with no use of a boom:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/josephmeo/6319584638/lightbox/

And it also requires a much shorter mast.

 

Not really... My sails are glued with sticky tape rather than sewed. They were made in clean, sterile conditions, and still it was very difficult. There is no way to do that here.

Maybe I'll make boom for that 3m^2 sail, using gaff from the big sail. It is short a few centimeters, but I'll think of some extension.

Tomorrow I'll continue working on mast step (found a way to make it). Also, I think I solved leeboard problem - attached them to an old piece of oar that still has that metal holder (pivot point) which goes into the socket on the sides of the boat. So, I'll insert leeboard as an oar to that socket, needing just a single line to prevent it from jumping out. It should hold.

By the way, does anyone know some method of how to insert a wood-screw into hard wood without drilling hole first? I strained my hand with screwdriver, trying to force them in. Takes maybe about 20 minutes per 3cm screw. Very painful and demoralizing. Tried nails instead - got stuck halfway through, and even though I was careful to hit exactly from above with the hammer, it bended. That wood is damn hard.
Any suggestions how to get that screw easier?

 

sharpen the end of the mast into a chisel type tip, and you can wedge it between the floor boards, that will hold it still in the fore and aft direction. If you can screw a small block of wood down on the floor on either side of it it will stop side to side movement. You might have to rig a way to lash it so it can not move side to side if you can not screw to the floor.

Go with a single cat rig, for get about a jib. keep it simple. consider the lug or junk rig, simple and easy to rig, easy to control. You should not meed a mast more than about 4 meters tall, that should also lower the forces on the rigging.

On the lee boards you will have to lash them both at the top, going over the top of the gunwale, and than put some lashings going under the hull, so you clamp them to the side of the boat with a top set and bottom set of lashings. The lashings going under the hull (in the water) will not have a very large impact on drag if you keep it tight to the hull where it is underwater, so do not worry about it.

 

I made some sketches. the board for bracing the top of the lee boards can get a notch to support the mast. you will need to cut notches in the edges of the lee board to keep the lashes in place so they do not slide around. the blocks of wood used to hold the base of the mast in place can be be tightly lashed or screwed to the floor boards.

everything must be strong and tight, consider that you are driving the boat forward with the mast and sail, if you can not feel confident in it if you grab it and pull hard on it as if pulling the boat foreward, than it is not suitable for a sail either.