I have been reading this thread with wry amusement.  When I set out on my junk conversion adventure, I had every intention of building a flat (or flatish) sail, given that Arion is a short fat heavy boat which sails and tacks wonderfully in smooth water but which needs to be sailed quite free in a seaway, at least 45 degrees to the apparent wind.  My research indicated that once you get the boat onto a close reach, the flat sail is good enough (that phrase again).  I couldn't see any justification for the added expense and complication of a cambered sail in my circumstances.  I understood that people with performance enhanced hulls and a love of racing and inshore sailing might see the benefits.  At the last minute, I was persuaded by David Tyler to build a cambered sail and he kindly devoted some of his precious time to designing the cambered panels and advising my sailmaker in Hobart.

In the meantime, I rigged up a flat sail that was gifted to me by fellow JRA member, Don Halliwell.  It was a Reddish style sail to which I added a bonnet on the foot which gave me about 90% of the designed sail area.  The top four panels were fanned so it looked like a hybrid of an HM and a Fantail sailplan.  When the winds reached 10 knots this sail performed adequately to windward (within the performance limitations of my hull design set out above), with the top of the sail twisting off nicely and providing a reasonable cambered shape.  In winds of less than 10 knots the windward performance was poor.  On a close reach the performance was good and with the wind aft of the beam the sail performed better than the bermudian rig with a fraction of the effort.  It was very easy to handle - it stacked nicely, and I could reef and furl without looking at the sail much, concentrating on my line handling. I was confident that I could manage this sail in adverse conditions, in a squall at night etc, though I was disappointed in losing the light air performance which the bermudian rig had excelled at.  I think I would have come to accept that in the end - everything in life, rigs included, is effectively a compromise - and anyway,, in light winds when making singlehanded coastal passages, I tend to motorsail or anchor up and wait, and offshore I just wait.  The adverse impact was only significant when daysailing in sheltered waters.

However, my cambered sail duly arrived and I bent it on.  It was a very different beast and initially I both hated and feared it.  It had severe negative batten stagger which caused endless grief with tangled sheets for a start and it had none of the docility of the flat sail when hoisting it in a seaway.  It was supposed to have 4% camber, giving a draft of 184mm, but it seems to have been built with a lot more than that, somewhere between 6 and 8 % I think, though I have not yet bothered to measure it, so am unsure of my facts.  Once up it sets fine and sails as well as the old bermudian rig did on all points of sail, including light airs.  Initially I had three luff hauling parrels and HK parrels, and even I laughed at the amount of cordage that went up with the sail (my marina neighbours thought it was all hysterically funny).  Reefing and furling were always a struggle and I found myself continually experimenting with different luff hauling parrel arrangements to try and control the batten stagger. 

I now have two luff hauling parrels.  The upper one is set up the way Arne suggests, as a throat hauling parrel, with the parrel going from the forward end of the yard, around the mast to the third topmost batten, then straight to the deck.  The lower one goes from the second batten up from the boom, around the mast, back to itself, down to the lowest batten then to the deck.  It stablizes the lower two battens but has little pressure applied.  The throat hauling parrel has a lot of pressure applied under sail, which totally removes any diagonal creases in the sail.  This has allowed me to remove all the HK parrels except the one in the transitional panel.  The best feature of Arne's throat hauling parrel though is that it allows me to control batten stagger.  I have led the yard hauling parrel and the throat hauling parrel through rope clutches, so that I can pull the slack out of them with one hand while I ease the halyard with the other.  When the nesting batten is just above the bundle or boom, I haul on the throat parrel and this pushes the nesting batten aft.  I keep hauling until it has a couple of inches of positive batten stagger and this is also enough for the rest of the sail to set properly.

The drawback, of course, is that I need to look at the leech of the sail while I am reefing or furling, not an easy thing to do on the proverbial dark and stormy night.  I have been wondering about fitting a swiveling spotlight aft to shine on the leech but basically at this stage I remain uncertain if I want to go voyaging with this sail. Paradoxically, I think it is the ideal sail for the sort of sailing I am currently doing, daysailing out of a marina in fine weather.  The other day I sailed through the anchorage in Trinity Inlet, short tacking between the moored boats like a large dinghy, tacking through less than 90 degrees and accelerating out of each tack magnificently.  The boat has never sailed better than it did on that day and when you add in the lack of headsail sheets to haul in, it was a damn sight MORE efficient than the old rig.

So my conclusion is that I like my cambered sail for daysailing and the improvement in windward performance - especially in light winds and smooth seas - is startling.  I am happy enough with the sail for my current purposes but am considering recutting it to make it sort of flattish before sailing offshore again.  I could recut the bottom panel and shorten the aft end of the boom by about 300mm, which would help, although my sail has equally large negative stagger on all parallel battens (if left to its own devices).  I feel that the peace of mind that comes with easy handling make a flattish sail a better option offshore, and yet I am reluctant to give up my enhanced performance.  I am trying to sail the boat as often as possible to build up more experience before deciding what to do.  Alan Martiessen has just fitted cambered black sails to Zebedee in Trinidad, so it will be interesting to see what he makes of them, given that he is a long-distance voyager.

I have a question for David Tyler.  If I do decide to go back to a flatish sail, how easy will it be to take the camber out of my current sail?  My thoughts are to lie the sail out flat, leave the luff and leech tabling intact, remove the batten pockets, unpick the seams between luff and leech tablings, recut and resew the panel seams then reattach the batten pockets.  What do you think?

Annie Hill wrote:

• Arne says that by pulling the battens into their correct place, they will eliminate luff hauling parrels.  I can see that.  But will that, in its turn, eliminate the diagonal creases which is what I use my luff-hauling parrel for?  (I expect David will answer this one.)

Annie, unfortunately, this system only works on sails with parallel battens, like on Badger and Johanna. Useless on a fanned batten sail.

Arne

Slieve McGalliard wrote: 

Edward is using a simplified version of the ‘spanned batten parrel/ downhaul’ information in Chapter 11. If you look at the third, fourth and fifth photos in the website photo gallery you will see that the red slippery line is tied to the batten behind the mast, goes round the mast, over the batten and down to be spanned with the batten below. The actual downhaul line has a nylon thimble (for cheapness in experimentation) pulling the span downwards, and is only ever ‘tug’ tight. You may notice that Edward has placed some short lengths of PVC plumbing pipe as parrel beads on the batten parrels.

Firstly, I apologise for often being a bit dense about things.  I am both technically and three-dimensionally challenged.

• I am intrigued by your downhauls.  But am I correct in thinking you need one for every two battens?
• Arne says that by pulling the battens into their correct place, they will eliminate luff hauling parrels.  I can see that.  But will that, in its turn, eliminate the diagonal creases which is what I use my luff-hauling parrel for?  (I expect David will answer this one.)
• They obviously effectively do the job of parrels on a more conventional junk rig, but you would still need parrels for when they are slack.  However, as you are using slippery rope (it looks like polythene) how would you prevent it from creeping along the battens to where they want to be rather than where you want them to be?
• Would they make sense on a non-split rig, as I feel they would?

PS  I love the Columbie egg story. I can see the phrase being used many times in these fora.  How often do we see a lovely, simple, elegant idea coming up that is obvious when you see it, but which no-one thought of before.  And what a great name it would be for a boat!

Bruce Weller wrote:This topic just gets more and more fascinating.

Two points:

Columbie egg, Arne?

I know I lead a sheltered life but even Google defeated me on this one. Setting aside the helpful but hopefully irrelevant references to a Columbia egg donation programme (which I was too nervous to follow up) I found only a video narrated in Norwegian which, because of my linguistic failings, was no assistance. I will be grateful for your advice, please.

 

                                                          Stavanger, Thursday

Hi Bruce

The story goes that Christopher Columbus claimed he could make an egg stand on end. And that he did, just by putting the egg a bit firmly on the table so the end was just a bit dented. That was the first Columbie Egg and from then on it has been used  on any cheap, simple and very good idea, technical or not.

Is "Columbie Egg/Columbus's egg/Egg of Columbus" not used out there in the world? Really?

Arne

Arne wrote: