New Rig

2 Months since I posted the last modifications, I guess I am improving 🤓.

I mentioned that I would try to use my mainsail and rig that as a lugsail. And it worked! Although with some comments of my sailmaker as a lugsail needs a reinforced luff. I temporarily solved this with a Dyneema line connecting the forward ends of the yard and the boom alongside the luff limiting the tension. 

Now the sail was raised as a lug in about half a day and it looked very pretty already. 

But it took several weeks tinkering, testing and experimenting to make it a real functional lug rig. I experimented with the attachement of the halyard, the main sheet, the downhaul and a variety of other small features to keep the rig in place. And of course It had to meet a number of “Arjen”-requirements:

• Construction as simple as possible
• Easy to setup
• Trimmable
• Able to lower the mast easy and quickly without detaching downhaul, sail and halyard
• Able to easily remove sail, yard and boom in one package for dry storing

Short test

I took Narhval for a sort test on a nice 3 BFT day on the local canal (Van Harinxmakanaal) and I found it sailing surprisingly well! Easy, relaxed and comfortable without any noticeable compromise to the sailing characteristics. It even tacked easier and it seemed to be a bit more controllable as well. Of course this due to the shifted CE which worked as I hoped for. 

Mizzen

Although the boat sailed better balanced it stil seemed to be a bit leeward and that was what I hoped for too. I got courages and decided to implement a mizzen as well. I considered a few options for this sail and came up with a triangular spritsail. This sail is very easy and fast to fold down to the mast, it doesn’t require a long stern sprit and it lacks yard and boom. It also is trimmable with the tension of the sprit. I made it so that I only have to detach the sprit tensioner to be able to pull out the mast-sail-sprit-pack in an instant. 

Probably I have to trim the mainsail a bit forward now but as the weather here in the Netherlands has been “reset” to 5-6BFT and rainy I wasn’t able to test it in the current configuration yet.

One of the things I learned up till now is that the calculation of CLR and CE isn’t as easy and straightforward as it seems. Especially the CLR needs some reconsideration. I found lots of information on the internet usually calculating the lateral surface under water as a whole finding the CLR.

As the shape of the bow influences the frontal resistance the shape of the lateral resistance must have a similar effect too. More about that in a next post.