The attached photo shows Emmelène's 5hp long shaft outboard. The waterline is in line with the previous owner's middle finger. It seems a bit overlong. I'd be interested to know if any Coromandel sailors have any experience of using a standard shaft outboard. Would it break the surface, or choke on its own exhaust fumes?

Thanks for all your replies, and the advice.

one question, is a long shaft outboard best vs standard shaft?. Was going to get a 6 hp

Hi Dick

I have a 1983 Coromandel (note correct spelling!) called Yellow Rock, that has been in storage for the best part of 16 years, 9 years from 2008 with the previous owner, bought by me in 2014 and again kept under cover until a couple of weeks ago, when I antifouled her and put her in the water. Now in the process of restoring the rig to working order. The reason I'm telling you this is that the whole rig was replaced in 1999 by Sunbird Marine under the designation 'Sunbird 90's rig'. This rig was based on a design called the 'Fenix rig', developed by the late Wing Commander R.L. 'Bunny' Smith after several years of expeimentation and refinement of the junk rig using mostly his Sadler 26 Fenix. As I am one personal witness after a lively sail with Bunny, it was significantly faster than with the standard Hasler-McLeod-based rig which was fitted to your and my Coromandel. The main differences are in the batten angles, sheeting and luff-control systems which are designed to allow the sail to take on a more powerful shape on the wind. Most of this extra power in this design is developed by the top panel which, being close to the mast, may have a lesser effect on the tendency of the extra power to create the weather helm reported by others who have used more power by adapting the whole sail construction. The sail on my Coromandel is ,I believe, actually the same sail area as the original. Anyway, if you're interested, I have most of the details of the 'Fenix' version of the Coromandel rig on file. I note that your yard has disintegrated; the one on my boat is alloy, the sail being fitted in a groove similarly to the usual way sails are fitted to a boom, whereas the battens are of flexible plastic pipe to allow increased shape in the sail; they are lighter and slimmer than the original wooden battens. I will attach a couple of photos, but hope to have better ones once the boat is sailing again. If you can make it to South Brittany (near Arzal on the Vilaine River), I would be delighted to take you for a sail later in the season when I have got to grips with Yellow Rock. Good luck with your Coromandel, they are great little boats with a much better cockpit and interior accomodation than the Corribee which shares the same hull. Welcome to the JRA!

Hello Dick,

i think your sail looks very similar to ours. Mai Poy has a Sunbird-rig with hinged battens. The battens end-cabs, the lack of batten parrells and the plastictubes on the portside seem to be the same. The batten under the yard in your picture seems to be to far forward. I‘ll add some pictures of our sail. What was said about the wetherhelm is sadly the truth, we have to fight with it too and I‘m thinking about to add a rudder plate. We are at the time on our fifth 2-month journey (Adriatic from Italy to south Croatia, two times Ionnian Sea and now for the second time in the Netherlands), we are definitive no hardcore sailors (at 6 Bft we prefer to stay in harbour, 5 Bft we only go out if we will sail off the wind ;-)) but we had accidentally strong winds and survived well reefed, we had no damage at our sail until now. The plastic-tubes hold the sail near the alloy-tubes, they have to be flexible and there is only less power to them. If I would go for a new sail, I would chose Arne‘s Style, I like the appearance more than the effective Split Junk Rig.

Michael

Ooops,.

I couldn’t resist the temptation of drawing up an alternative JR for that Coromandel. Hopefully the mast’s position and mast length is the same as found in Sailboatdata. As can be seen, the sail has moved quite a bit forward, and there is still room for moving the CE another 100-150mm forward.
That rudder is terribly small. I don’t understand how Newbridge got away with it. They must have received quite a few complaints. My first remedy would be to add a largish end plate to it.

The sail I have drawn is actually a down-scaled version of the sail driving Ketil Greve’s Kelt 8.50. See recent appendix to my write-up Junk Rig for Beginners ( http://goo.gl/vzGLzi ).

Cheers,
Arne

(Arne's sketches section 7, photo 26)