I like to think of our boats being in the tradition of [b]Lorcha[/b] vessles, a combination of european hull lines and Chinese rigging. Very few designs, D. Forrestier being the exception, have anything to do with traditional Junks. Then again they where never intended as pleasure boats in the first place.  

I agree Annie.

And it seems to me that Roger Taylor is maintaining this ethos admirably.

Junk Rig is fine by me. Can't mean anything else but those fully battened rigs with a sheetlet going to each batten. 

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'

David
I take your point, but I see things rather differently. I agree that they are all indisputably of a type - indeed I see great unity in the varieties of traditional (uninfluenced by Westernisation) junk rig up and down the China coast. Even given the 'Northern' and 'Southern' types, and the continuum of intermediacy between them as one moves southward.

Someone like Worcester, examining the 'infinite varieties', might sometimes forget to stand back and see them as a group and compare the group to others around the world. As the statisticians have it, the 'within group' variance seems to me to be far less than the 'between group' variance. Looking through Worcester's little book again, the essential unity of the rigs he illustrates still stands out to me.

The same might be said of the traditional Chinese hulls - examine his illustrations of the four basic types of bow and stern in the introduction. Knowing also the similarities in the way they are constructed, they stand as a group, in strong contrast to contemporary hulls elsewhere in the world.