Just before you go....
Your last post concerned me a bit and I’m 100% with David now.
I made a mistake in my last post too. We are totally rained-out here and stuck inside a small cabin with a few hours to kill – it was not very clever of me and I regret being a little flippant. I still say that hull is not too extreme, it could be made to tootle along quite nicely at displacement speed, and for that reason, while not ideal, it could be made to carry some sail. I have had the fun of doing that sort of thing and wanted to share that. But here’s the problem. There is no harm in chopping into an old boat which nobody wanted, changing things around a bit and being a bit creative – which is what I was going on about. But I completely forgot, that is not your case. Even though you are a long way from it and still in the dream stage, at some point you will have to get your power tools out and prepare to start doing some drilling, cutting and grinding – and if you are wise you will stop at that point.
Your boat has integrity the way it is, it would be a shame to lose that.
Its probably just you and me on this thread now, and I have already dug a hole for myself, and it is still persisting down with rain here, so I will carry on a bit.
This has nothing to do with winning regattas or trying to get from A to B a bit quicker. The extra weight, 115 kg, placed where it is on your boat, most certainly represents a “big deal”. This is not “mitigated” by the helmsman shifting forward a couple of metres to that unsuitably high central steering position. That might improve the fore-and-aft trim a little, but much more than that is at issue. In fact there is nothing you can do by shifting weights (or worse, adding weight) to mitigate against the effect of that motor being placed where it is. The designer has already done that, in the best way possible, by shaping the aft sections so as to provide the extra buoyancy needed, and providing that long flat bottom at the back, which allows you to utilise all that power, and plane at 25 knots. And in the process, made the hull less suitable for sail, though I must say he has done it gently and rather well – I suspect that probably a bit less than 65hp was in his mind – and the result is nothing too extreme, which is why a bit of sail would still not have been out of the question. (And that gorgeous fore-body that makes her look like a whaler when viewed from the front – damn, that’s a lovely motor boat!)
You have got the idea of twin kick-up rudders, which I think does allow the existing steering gear to remain in place, and of course lifting the motor reduces the drag of the propeller (not much probably, at the speed you will be sailing at but every little bit counts.) But who is going to want to drill the holes in the transom, necessary to fit them? And that’s only the start of it. I think that central steering pod would need to go, for a start, and then where would you hang the hydraulic steering? And are those buoyancy compartments up the front there, where a mast will have to be fitted?
By the way, I am not the one to advise on junk rigs, but to answer your question, if you draw or copy a nice picture of a junk sail that you like the look of and then super-impose a scale on it so the mast is 4m, then you will quickly be able to calculate the sail area for yourself. I don’t think any rig will give you enough area if boat and rig has to go under a 3.8m bridge. You will probably need to have a longer mast, and put it up after you have gone under the bridge, or maybe consider two masts. But I have gone off the idea, personally. Listen to David, his advice was good.
Don’t do it.
Lets step back and have a complete fresh look at the problem. You want to have a junk rig – but what type of rig to have is actually way down on the list of decisions that need to be made (and a junk IS a type of balanced lug, by the way, or I stand to be corrected.) OK, OK, if having a junk rig is the uppermost requirement, then next you need to find a suitable hull to put it on. I would suggest not your motor boat because it now becomes evident that you (quite rightly) don’t want to part with any those things which make it the excellent little vessel it currently is.
But you can’t have your cake and eat it too, that’s the reality.
My approach, in New Zealand, would be to look at the second-hand market and find some run-down specimen that needs a bit of love and care and make it a test bed for your ideas, don’t spend too much. So I had an online trawl through the brokers’ columns for Mauritius, and now I appreciate what you are up against. I was surprised, considering the sailing conditions I imagined must exist in Mauritius, to find there was nothing, absolutely nothing in the least bit appealing or suitable. Actually, there was one exception – there was one rather nice-looking hull that caught my eye, and would you believe, on closer inspection, it turned out to be an Aclin 18 – exactly like yours, only it had a 30hp motor.
It surprises me there are no old trailer yachts or car-top sailboats for sale. That would have been your easiest solution, quickest result.
So that leads to one remaining suggestion. Can you get sheet plywood etc in Mauritius? How about a winter project, build a little plywood boat especially for your children to use in the lagoon – make it light so you can carry it on your car top – if not too big you might even be able to sling it across your foredeck and take it away with you on the Aclin on fine days – but better I think, for three sons, to be a little bigger and made for sailing in the lagoon, with a junk rig, on the days when you don’t want to go out in the Aclin.
It does not need to be too flash or expensive. A perfect example is right before your eyes, in the current edition (Issue 74) of JRA Magazine – Freebie, by Marcus Ramon. (And a bit more detail was given on this website as Freebie was last month’s “Boat of the Month” – if you missed it, maybe the webmaster can dig it out for you.) That should inspire you. You don’t need to copy Freebie either – Freebie might be a bit too big for you to build at home or carry on your car top, though great if you could manage it. But a little smaller (and a little more wholesome!) would be OK. It’s the idea of it, the spirit of it that Marcus has captured so brilliantly.
I am sorry, I don’t know why I did not think of that before.
I bet if you started a new thread, with the quest for a suitable plywood dinghy junk, you would get a flood of suggestions. As a matter of fact, some of the technical experts have recently been considering just such a boat, as a test bed for comparison trials, on one of the other threads. The cost of building a simple plywood boat would be less than the total cost of modifying your existing boat, if you include in the costings the reduction in its resale value after it has been modified.
Build a simple little plywood sailboat you can keep at home. Have two boats.