Hi Mauro
Batten, boom and yard lengths:
I generally cut the battens a bit, longer, 5-10cm that the B-dimension. The yard could well be 10cm longer. The batten 2 is cut so that its aft end is at least flush with the vertical leech. In this case, 29cm extra is needed. You may well add another 5-10cm. This ensures that the uppermost sheetlet will clear the sail when gybing.

Tying sail to the battens, etc.
When tying the batten to the sail (with pockets), I start with tying at the aft end, and then try to tie the batten flush with the leech (again to avoid sheetlet-batten conflicts). Then I tie the sail to the batten in the forward end. Now I stretch the sail lightly to minimise wrinkles along the battens.
The boom should also be tied flush with the leech.

Choice of batten dimensions:
I am no expert in calculating batten dimensions. Anyway, one must use what is available. I guess I would try 25 x 2mm for the lower battens. The boom, and two upper battens could well be 35 x 2mm or 35 x 1.5mm.

Odyssey for sail:
The Odyssey III has worked well for me. However, I have seen those on lower latitudes who have had problems with UV-damage. The Odyssey only has UV-coating on one side. I still think it will work, as long as you make a sail cover and use it when the boat is out of use.

Good luck!
Arne

Hallo Arne,

Thank you for your thoughts and suggestions!

The mast is 8,3 m long, 6 m above the deck and sits on the deckhouse immediately behind the front portholes. I cannot take the exact measure because the boat is already in France…the former owner is waiting to register the street trailer and then I will be able to transport her to Austria (where I live).

I would like to do day sailing and costal cruising mainly in the south of Sardinia, where I was born and where is enough wind. The crew will consists of me (little experience) and my family (no experience)…so you are definitively right, it’s better to start with a smaller sail area and than eventually increase it as the experience has also increased.

I think I will just copy the sail plan of FS. After all this is my first sailmaker project and I feel that knowing all the measures will help me avoiding technical errors or miscalculations.

Thank you again

Mauro

Hello everyone!

This is almost my first post on the site.

I am an Italian 40+ Laser sailor. Although I still consider myself a novice of this class, over the past 5 years I have learned a lot about sailing with an unstayed rig. And I love it! In this time I had also some sailing courses on big bermudian sloops in order to learn how to sail bigger boats and dreaming for costal cruising with my family. Through these experiences I realized how can be hard to sail a big bermudian sloop shorthand when the wind increase. So I started searching in internet for alternatives. The first ones that I found were cat boats (for example the Nonsuch yachts) and cat ketches (freedom yachts, norwalk island sharpies, etc.). I consider these boats too big or too expensive for a first cruising attempt.

In my search I finally discovered Roger Taylor and his books and with them the junk rig.

Finally I became member of the JRA and thank to Pete Hill and Linda I became also the proud owner of a junk rigged Kingfisher 20+.

The boat is called Shui Jen and it belonged to Vincent Reddish. Shui Jen has an old flat sail that I would like to replace with a self made cambered one in the style of Arne Kverneland. The original sail is about 20 sqm and I thought that probably a bigger sail area would allow better performance in light wind. According to PJR, Pilmer's sail area was 21 square meters, plus a 7.5 square meter ghosting foresail. Adding the two sails the sail area would increase to 28.5 square meters and this would be equivalent to a SA /disp of 24.15. So I speculated to grab the sail plan of Frøken Sørensen and increase the AR to 2.10 in order to get 25.23 sqm and a SA/disp of 21.2. This seemed to me a good compromise. Anyway, a taller and more powerful sail would probably mean to change the original alloy mast with a taller and stronger one. Too much for an absolut beginner, working on his first DIY rig, with a young family and a demanding job (I am a surgeon).

So I turn back to the original sail area and decided just to grab the sail plan of Frøken Sørensen….anyway Mrs Sorensen weighs the half of Mrs Shui Jen (650 kg vs 1315 kg). Would it be a good idea to add a bit of „muscles“ by increasing the camber of the lower panels? If it is, would 10% be a reasonable camber? How many panels should be tuned in this way?

Kind regards

Mauro Pau