best read for junk v bermuda for criusing live abord

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  • 13 Jan 2020 20:31
    Reply # 8563009 on 8547409

    Hi Andrew,

    try contacting Gary Pick in Tweed Heads or Graham Cox in Maloolaba. They both have junk rigged boats and I am sure would be only too willing to provide a demonstration sail. Their contact details can be found on the members list.

    All the best, David.

  • 13 Jan 2020 11:45
    Reply # 8559498 on 8547409
    Deleted user

    Thanks very much for your good words. you have helped crystallize things.

    the boat will be used for long term cruising. so it still sounds like a good idea.

    after i started having my doubts. i started looking at triangle boats for the first time proper. there are so many out there.

    hence my need to hear your experience, so thanks very much i really appreciate it.

    Andrew

    i would love to sail a junk in NSW or brisbane are if anyone knows. apparently not!



  • 12 Jan 2020 15:57
    Reply # 8552648 on 8547409

    Bonjour


    As I'm rather experienced and own two boats very different my opinion may be of interest.


    I'm 70 years old now and I am not as fit as I used to be... I sail and raced since I was 13 years old on all sizes of boats. I own, as a teenager, an old gaffer (a 18 feet yawl). I participated to the first Jester Challenge (single handed transatlantic non-race from Plymouth to Newport RI) on a very racing boat (a 30' Figaro Beneteau). I choose the northern route...



    The Junk is "Mingming" the well known minimalist cruiser (Shallow draft, small rudder, no engine, flat sail (modified in "lambda sheeting" and flexible battens to give some - rather bad- camber). A very minimalist cruising boat but unsinkable and watertight.

    The pointy is a X95 "Frk.Xand" from X Yachts in Denmark. Outside she is a Half-toner with a spagetty mast, spreaders, huge mainsail, huge furling genoa, 2 smaller gibs, spinnaker, 1.90m draft, 3000Kg weigt,1500kg of keel,  huge rudder, inboard engine. Inside she is a very cosy cruising boat. (Yes, the "Mouton à 5 pattes" exists !).


    I love them both but I sail them differently.


    I sail Frk.Xand mainly in family cruising, almost single handed, (my wife is definitly not a a deck-hand and may be seasick and my grandchild are too small to help efficiently). I use all the sail and as I hate engines I tack quite easily in narrow spaces as "la rivière de Morlaix" or "Scilly islands" or "Chenal de terres de Batz" (Probably these are Chinese (normal for a junky) for an  Australian skipper , I'm afraid!). It is hard work but good for health. I sail her single handed from Copenhagen(Denmark) to Rexcel (South Netheland) single hande, then two handed to north Britanny(France) when I bought her.


    I use Mingming in a very different way to experiment riggings (Lambda sheeting and, under way, flexible wing-sail with lambda sheeting) and to promote Junkrig in France. I participated for exemple to the 2019 "semaine du Golf du Morbihan" where I was the smallest  in a « flotille » of 70 pointies, some of them performant with racing gear. The Golf du Morbihan is a closed maritime area linked to the sea by a narrow gap and housing hundreds of island. The tides are huge and the winds are shifting and funneling; a nice place to sail. There were about 1500 boats running about the area. I almost always arrived last but was far from being ridiculous. The pointies were impressed by the easiness and performance of the junkrig, eathen windward with my far from performant sail. I demonstrated the junkrig by taking aboard some skippers during the lunch moorings (short spaces between the boats moored on buoys and current) they where impressed by the maniability (tacking and even more jibbing) and reefing easyness.


    To conclude, today I'm convinced of a few things:


    - You may, with some skill and experience, "play" as much with a pointy as with a Junk.

    - When you’ve miss something, overcanevased, miss tack, engine issue, torn sail … you are more confortable on a junk because it is easier and faster to react to the situation.

    - On a racing pointy the twinning of the sails, mast, rigging... is very demanding and under my experience much more than on a junk. On the other way it is more possible to  adapt the shape of the sails to the conditions. If you enjoy it it may a great fun, at least for me, I spend my time strimming.

    -On a junk you don't realy need to adapt the power of the sail to the conditions. You just add or supress some sail area if you sail is big enough, and there is no reason not to be so. For triming devils it might be frustrating.

    - Today, I enjoy the X95 as much as I can because I know that the time will come (too soon) when I will not physically be able to handle her (winch efforts, deck work..) anymore. The choice will be junk or motor boat.

    -On pure sailing performance a racing pointy is a great fun; but most of the said "sailing cruising boats" for sale are more on the motor sailor or barge range under my criteria.They are not better than the ordinarry junk windward; they motorsail, at best, or motor windward.

    -The windward performance of a cruising junk is not anymore a problem with modern (cambered, slotted, wing) sails. Rare experiences (X99 in Norway) show that racing boats under Junkrig are performant. Most of the time the cruising junk will be as performant of the equivalent pointy. The skipper makes the difference with the easiness in handling of the junk on one hand and his ability to support the noise of the engine on the other.

    -I've broken three masts in my life and I don't think that the weekness of the pointy rigging is a real argument. A well maintained bermudian rigging has no reason to break more or less than a standing mast.

    I think that the main issue is what do you want to do with the boat: Performant cruising, relax cruising, visiting, living aboard for long periods, ocean sailing, family sailing, in area with big tides...

    For a live aboard cruising boat who should probably be overcharged (under the racing boat criteria at least) and should stay long periods at mooring; I would, for myself and at my age, choose a large, confortable, shallow junk to be able to sail relax single handed and enter any river or lagonn…. perhaps a flat bottom or a scow or a bildge keel to dry in creeks.

    Eric
    Last modified: 12 Jan 2020 16:34 | Anonymous member
  • 12 Jan 2020 13:42
    Reply # 8551863 on 8551041
    Arne wrote:What never fails, is to tack up a narrow sound (yes, to windward), only a few boatlengths wide.

    Yes, that's right. When I have demonstrated how I can sail to windward into a narrow place that I don't know and never visited before, under full control, ready to make any adjustments to the rig at a moment's notice, the bermudan sailors have said "I wouldn't dare to do that under my rig". There's a big difference between racing to windward in open water and steady conditions, and cruising to windward in confined conditions, where wind-shadow and gusts might be a problem, where there's a lack of manpower to adjust the sails quickly, and similar real-life situations. If the need is for a rig that's good for long term cruising and living aboard - no contest, the junk rig wins on all counts.
  • 12 Jan 2020 11:13
    Reply # 8551041 on 8547409
    Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Andrew,

    the matter of windward performance seems to pop up again and again. David Thatcher’s feedback indicates that his Underwood-designed Footprints didn’t shine to windward, not even with the cambered panel JR. Question is then, would Footprints fly to windward under a Bermuian rig? I doubt it, since its keel and rudder is fairly shallow.
    My experience is that the performance-to-windward gap between Bermudian and junk-rigged boats has been almost closed. A boat with a good JR will be less than 5% slower to windward than a sister-boat with a BR.
    A few years back, we had a little match-race between my junk-rigged Marieholm IF, Ingeborg, and an original Nordic Folkboat, La Barca. Overall, the Marieholm came out faster, but the FB was a bit faster to windward. After that, I eased the tension in the sail along the battens so the camber/chord ratio increased from 7 to 8%. Recently another IF arrived in my harbour, so next summer we will have a chance to compare two identical hulls, one with the original BR and mine with the JR.
    I hope to write a summary of that test.

    Arne

    PS:
    David Tyler is so right that you should find a chance to sail under a JR  -  but I must warn you: Everyone who have sailed in my boats have ended up convinced, converted and sold after just an hour! What never fails, is to tack up a narrow sound (yes, to windward), only a few boatlengths wide.


    Last modified: 12 Jan 2020 11:31 | Anonymous member (Administrator)
  • 12 Jan 2020 09:01
    Reply # 8550343 on 8547409

    Andrew,

    Like David, I could give you a list of all the attributes of these rigs from the point of view of an experienced sailor - 60 years and over 100,000 miles, a working lifetime spent designing components for bermudan rigs followed by a retirement spent roaming the seas under junk rig. The facts are clear. Both rigs have their place in the scheme of things, the bermudan rig being better for racing to windward, but not so convenient for everything else, and the junk rig being better for everything except racing to windward.

    This isn't going to help you, though. What matters more than reading about how other people get on with either rig is finding out at first hand how you, yourself, get on. If you can't get onto a junk rigged boat on the NSW coast (which I'm having difficulty believing), then you're going to have to travel. A plane to Auckland and a bus to Whangerei and the Bay of Islands gets you into the epicentre of NZ junk rig activity. The big event of the year is happening as I write.

    Last modified: 12 Jan 2020 09:38 | Anonymous member
  • 12 Jan 2020 04:38
    Reply # 8548826 on 8547409
    Deleted user

    Hello Andrew,

    I suspect the best place to find the type of stories you are after is in the back issues of the JRA magazines. There is a wealth of good stories and information there. With regards to Junk versus Bermudan, as a person who has gone from Bermudan to Junk, and back to Bermudan again I think I can provide some comments. I went from a reasonably high performance trimaran, to a junk rig yacht which just did not work as it was set up when I bought the boat. I spent some years sorting the rig out, with a lot of help from people such as David Tyler, and in the end achieved a lot with that boat including an offshore Pacific adventure. I have now gone back to a high performance Bermudan rig monohull. So a quick summary of my thoughts.

    Bermudan

    • Generally go better to windward, but of course that depends on a lot of factors such as hull type, how good the sails are, and how well the boat is sailed.
    • Complex rig with main and jib of some sort, and a downwind sail also required for good downwind performance.
    • Complex to reef, lots of sails to get ready before going sailing.
    • Generally require leaving the cockpit for sail handling chores.
    • Complexity of standing rigging to hold the mast up, and if one of those bits of wire break it is generally all over as far as the mast is concerned.
    • Lots of expensive fittings and winches.
    • High load.

    Junk

    • Compromised windward performance but can be overcome depending on junk sail type. The camber panel sail on my junk rig was a big improvement over the original flat sail but there were times when the lack of windward performance made me very frustrated and had me pulling my hair out, maybe that's why I don't have much hair now!
    • If it is a large sail a junk sail can be quite hard work to hoist, but once it is up the sail handling including reefing is easy.
    • All sail handling including reefing can be done from the cockpit without any need to go forward.
    • Reefing, or shaking out a reef is dead simple.
    • If you want to drop the sail it will come down in an instant and self stow.
    • Optimised down wind performance with only a single sail, or two if a multiple mast rig, but no need for specialised down wind sails.
    • Low tech and low load, the ultimate DIY rig. 

    So as a very experienced offshore and coastal sailor having owned quite a variety of cruising yachts my preferred rig for easy relaxed sailing despite some windward performance compromises - the Junk rig.

    There are other factors to consider though such as a scarcity of well executed junk rig cruising yachts available whereas there are many well executed Bermudan rig yachts available. This is exactly the reason why I am back to a Bermudan rig yacht. Of course most yachts can be converted to junk rig but that requires a certain level of handyman skills and the drive to carry out the work.  

    Last modified: 12 Jan 2020 05:48 | Deleted user
  • 12 Jan 2020 00:26
    Message # 8547409
    Deleted user

    I have been looking as you may all well know, at a junk for last year or so, and have been mm from pulling trigger. I almost bought and its still for sale the aluminum freedom in langkawi bay, but after i had some confusion about a repair job, i was put off the scent and got busy with life and started reflecting on the whole boat trip from the negative. is it really what i want to do, is a junk rig a better set up, how many situations is a junk less practical, as in upwind performance. does it really tilt the scale, and is it a case of 6 of one half dozen of the other, as in, you win some you lose some. so on balance it even out, 
    what i would like is to read more on junk sailors who have had plenty of experience with both set ups. can someone send me a link(s)

    i have Annies book, of course, but am happy for a summary of peoples experience. i have never sailed on a junk rig, and there doesnt seem to be anyone in sydney or australia who is willing to have me on board. so i will make do with the written word.

    many thanks.


    Andrew, sydney



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