Sorry guys, but here we go again. Slieve is just about to push his split junk rig set-up yet again.
Seriously though, recently there have been a number of threads about fan ups, Chinese gibes and batten stacking problems and now we’re looking at straight forward gibing concerns and these are all things that are not a problem with the Poppy rig.
The two main structural features of the Poppy rig are maximum sail balance and the use of downhauls to simplify the rigging. The downhauls work well with the large amount of balance as the downward pull is working quite close to the middle of the batten so applies tension to both the luff and the leech. With this set up there is very little chance of a fan-up or Chinese gibe as the framework is well tensioned across the middle by the halyard and downhauls. The rig swings around like a barn door, but with the aerodynamic lift built into the camber.
As the halyard supports the rig near the centre then the battens tend to fall straight down on top of each other in an orderly fashion, so there seems to be no stacking problems.
As for gibing, the only problem on Poppy is that the aft ends of the battens are not clean and flush with the leech of the sail and can catch the sheet, and that is something that I will clean up someday when I have nothing better to do. (Dream on, Mac) Firstly, I sail Poppy with the rig fully squared off at right angles to the centre line when the wind is more than 140deg from the bow, so the risk of an accidental gibe is minimum. I’m happy to let a 4-year-old sail Poppy on the dead run, but wouldn’t try on a Bermudan rig. I have even found a guest on board who had followed the river round and was sailing 70deg by the lee and the rig was still stable, but the speed was lower. The only concern with an accidental gibe is that there is no hoop over the cockpit, but even so, when the sail starts to swing across there is no real speed in it due to the large balance.
I tend to gibe all standing by swinging the boat to 90deg by the lee and letting the wind do the work. The sail swings across relatively slowly so there is time to grab a handful of the sheet and flick it over your head, and the sail ends up feathered with slack sheets before you either sheet in of bear away again. The only problem is that the sheet can catch on the batten end fittings, which should be changed, but even that does not matter as the downhauls keep the sail fairly flat. By the way, I’ve crash gibed like this with full sail in a lumpy force 6 plus where the water speed was away above hull speed. As the boat turns more by the lee it starts to slow down so that when the sail crosses the boat the water speed is moderate, and the only problem is the seas on your beam, so it is worth timing the manoeuvre between crests.
It is possible to gibe by sheeting in and out when sailing up the narrow bit of a river, but that needs effort, and I try not to do ‘effort’ if I can help it. Alternatively, if sailing up a river then there’s no problem is sailing up to about 45deg by the lee if the wind is reasonably stable. It’s fun to do this on starboard tack when you meet a fleet of racing dinghies. They don’t like it!
I remember sailing Arne’s Johanna and playing with the gibe in a force three to four. Squared off and gibing all standing there was no problem as there was no energy in the sail as it reached the end of its swing. I then tried sheeting the sail in to 45deg and crash gibing and although there was some drive in the sail as it came up on the sheet, it was still not a frightening experience.
Even if you don’t want to risk the split rig, the van Loan rig also has high balance and downhauls and has the same convenient sailing characteristics and low stress advantages. For those who are happy with a flat sail then it would be well worth considering. Where some believe a high peeked yard is important there are also those of us who believe the longer tight luff and the shallow yard angle give less vortex/ tip drag which can be a major inefficiency. I would not be surprised if a van Loan rig with about 7% camber would give good performance, even without a split, though it may need chafe reinforcement in way of the mast. The problem is that I am not prepared to try it myself as I’m very happy with the rig I’ve got.
Cheers, Slieve.