After few months of relentless hard work and with much help from the JRA  members in New Zealand my boat, was ready for its junk rig launch.  The mast was stepped and the sails raised on 21 May 2017.  Pete Hill, put much of hard work in the last 3 months designing her rig, building the top mast, aero junk rigging and just about everything that goes with it. The moment she took off the pontoon (literally) we both livened up looking and feeling like two young kids taken for a first dinghy ride. Pete said:

The winds were light but it was sufficient to see how the rig worked. You would expect a Francis Herreshoff design to sail well and Francis with her new rig performed even better than expected. The rig was almost perfectly balanced with just a touch of weather helm and steering was fingertip light. She seemed fast in the light winds, pointed high and tacked on a sixpence. There were a lot of big smiles all round on that day. Much more testing will need to be done in varying conditions to evaluate the rig properly.

We had only one sunny afternoon to sail her before packing her off for the winter and sailing off to Polynesia. However, I will be back to sail her extensively next season. She will be having a lot of fun on the waves and in the calms around New Zealand coastline with us.

Photos

For those who might be interested here are some technical details:

7% lead (not taking the rudder into account)

Sail area  16.72 sq. metres, with the jiblet being 26% of the total sail area

Mast length 7.5m overall, 6.5m above partners

Lower mast: 100mm diameter, 3mm wall thickness, 6m aluminium (6060 T5)

Top Mast: Oregon Pine (Douglas Fir), 2.5m (solid)

Mast weight 25Kg

Battens & Yard 10kg

Sails 8kg

LOA5.63m18’ 6”

LWL4.69m15’ 5”

Beam1.90m6’ 3”

Draught 0.76m2’ 6”

Displac.770kg1700lbs

Ballast363kg800lbs