I find that one of the unusual aspects of sailing junk rig, rather than gaff or bermudian, is that I tend to reef when I turn off the wind and shake the reefs out as I sail closer to the wind.  

I made that observation, too. Quite interesting!

You might still be in the mindset where shaking out the reef as the wind comes forward of the beam is the opposite of what feels right.  When in doubt, shake it out: it's easier enough to put back in if you've been too enthusiastic!

Hehe, it is the opposite: I'm in the mindset of sailing at or slightly above hull speed, if the wind allows it (which he does more often, now with the junk rig). I so much adore to be able to reef at any course, quickly and only just the amount I want. Which brings me to another topic:

I have been warned, that one shall reef early when running, as there would be a danger of "batten breaking". However, I don't quite understand, if for example I lower two panels, why the battens of the upper panels should then have less load... Sure, with two panels down the boom and lower two battens have way less load. But this does not affect the upper ones, does it?

What I do understand is of course the decrease in mast load, and also that one cannot "feel" the mast load when running due to the lack of heeling - similar to catamaran sailing.

Arne wrote:

I guess Paul S has made the forward batten pockets a bit longer than those on Boudicca, to let him further increase the mast balance.

By the way, love the junk sailing: being able to post here, while navigating in these tight waters

Paul S wrote:

Just measured:

Camber: 9.6% (47 cm at 490 cm chord length), measured at position of max camber

Balance: 23,3% (114 cm at 490 cm chord length)

Arne, I guess my camber is a bit higher then your estimation because I slackened the batten tension quite a bit (you proposed 2-4cm. Probably I overdid it a bit and went for 4-6cm). However, I'm quite happy with that increased amount of camber.

Good  -  and you of course remembered to subtract the thickness of the battens? 
Those 23.3% mast balance, is that before or after you latest adjustment?

As for tacking angle in light winds, there are two possible reasons for that:

• Tacking angle on the chart will always be worse in light winds than in strong winds, since the headwind (boat speed) component is relatively stronger than in stronger winds. We don't sail twice as fast in 12kts winds as in 6kts.
• Some fine keels may lose grip in lighter winds. My former boat, Johanna was not so good in that respect.

Arne

Arne, another reason for the (rather little) deviation of your and Ketils camber to mine could be, that we used different curves: as I read it, you used a bending wooden spline, whereas I used CAD. In principle the same, however in practice some deviation would be expectable.

It might be interesting to compare those curves. Do you have any foto from above of your curve? We could easily put my drawing on top and compare (though it would admitedly be rather academic).

Cheers,

Paul