Just to reiterate, the designers and builders of boats that meet the definition of junk rig as having a sheetlet for each batten or boomlet described their canoes with a single sheet as junk rigged too. They built many such canoes over three or more decades and they were described as junk rigged in the primary literature. The difference between then and now is that they used their boats for only for coastal sailing. The primary interest of the JRA to date has been rigs for boats that could cross oceans whether they do so or not. It is understandable that rigs with such different purposes would have structural differences.

 If you look at the images from Worcester that I've attached you will see that multiple sheetlets were used on sails without boomlets, sails with some boomlets, and differently on the same boat. They also clearly were not related to reefing on some boats that had more air than sail.

Defining things precisely is impossible when the uses are so fluid and the same technology varies across the uses. You will end up with hundreds of definitions just like the Chinese. The lug rig itself is new to Europe and is a sail with a yard that may or may not have a boom. The unique characteristic of a Chinese lug sail was how the stresses on the sails and masts were diffused vertically across the sail. The weak mat sails, and later 11 inch wide sail cloth, was literally hung within a framework comprised of bolt ropes and boomlets. That is what makes a Chinese lug rig unique and distinguishable from a European lug rig. All of the other rig details appear to have been variable and optional. Hasler used what he needed for his purpose. The British junk rig sailors, yacht and canoe, of the 1870s did so too. The defining characteristic of a sail suspended within a framework is shared between them.

Please tell me how to provide the links so folks can access them. Thanks 

I'm afraid I disagree with your word 'boomlet', Graeme.  Battens are usually long pieces o wood used to stiffen something: on ships they were also used to hold down the tarpaulin around the hatch.  Moreover, a sail batten was originailly used to stiffen the leach of a sail - I acquired some made of Tufnol when I was building FanShi and used it for a number of purposes.  While they were flexible - one feels on the principle of what bends won't break - certainly the wind pressure on the leach wouldn't not have bent them.  However, if they got caught in the rigging they wouldnt instantly snap.

Flexible battens such as are now used in 'fully-battened' mainsails have become popularised subsequently to H/McL's terminology, so I think we can stick with battens.  I believe the correct noun for the lowermost batten is still 'boom', because it is attached to mast and sail differently, generally has an attachment to the deck and its function is somewhat different from the other battens.

Graeme, thanks for fixing the link problem, I didn't know it would be an issue.

Over 130 years ago the junk rig was being extensively developed in England and in China by Europeans. If you go back to JRA Volume 6 of 1982 you can read an article about Landseer MacKensie who experimented with the rig in the 1860s and 1870s, in yachts and canoes, and his exploits can be read because the book describing them was digitized by Google as were the books at the links in my initial posts.

Hasler was scooped by 100 years. But, Hasler was focused on designing and building the smallest boat that a solo sailor could take across oceans. For that use variable reefing of a single sail was paramount. The Chinese sailors could have cared less about that requirement. Their boats were working boats with many variants used for specific wind and sea conditions. The river boats had the most battens by far and almost no need for reefing. The mizzen sail on may types of junks sometimes had a single sheet and reefing ability likely wasn't needed because it was a steering and riding sail. Arne is right about the main of the Liberdade but the mizzen appears to have a single sheet.

The sails used for British canoes had only two or three panels because that was all the sail area they could carry. MacKensie's yacht had more panels than his canoe. The book I cited runs to 670 or so pages and about 50 or so are dedicated to designing, building, and sailing Chinese lug rigged canoes. There is also a section on Chinese junk rig too. It was a time of great experimentation and international influences as the pasttime of yachting was born. There are very detailed drawings and descriptions of the rig. Perhaps 100 or so of those canoes were built and rigged over three or four decades, just a guess, and at least several yachts were built. One, Charm, from the 1870s is attached, it was a centerboarder.

Most trailer boats, day sailing boats, and weekend cruisers, have one or two sets of reef points and don't require more. Perhaps they don't require 7 panel junk sails with a full set of sheetlets? Putting a 7 panel sail on an 14 foot boat because you can reef down to two or three panels at most strikes me as silly for most uses as the canoeists have shown that isn't necessary - kind of like a scaled down pirate ship.

I think that it would consistent with the rest of the references in the references document and the intent of the JRA Constitution, "to promote and encourage discussion of junk rig (JR), including its traditional use, its design, and developments of it, and of the building and use of vessels with such rigs and their derivatives", to include them in that document and perhaps link to them in the JRA reference section.

John, your text has gone outside of the visible range because of the URLs at the bottom of your post. I suggest removing them and replacing with links.  [Fixed by Webmaster]

In the meantime, if anyone wants to read John's post they may do so by copying and pasting it into a regular text processor such as MSWord.

This discussion has recently been well-thrashed on Facebook Page (International Junk Rig: Sailing Old and New). I take the terms "Chinese lug" and "junk rig" to be synonymous, the controversy being whether or not these interesting, fully-battened canoe rigs (and others) may correctly be classed as junk rigs.

Arguments over terminology quickly become tedious (eg the good old argument about what is a ketch and what is a yawl etc) and usually a waste of time.

There is quite a bit of terminology in the junk rig lexicon which is a little unfortunate (the use of the word ”batten”, for example, and “topping lift” for another), which have come about and “stuck” for historical reasons. It would be better if battens had been called “boomlets” since they are spars (similar to a boom) and generally not bendy like most sailing people expect full-length battens to be. Loose terminology can give rise to misunderstanding. However, perhaps that doesn’t really matter too much, provided the reader and the writer always understand each other. It is tedious to make an argument out of it.

In my opinion, the addition of a couple of full length battens to a lug sail does not create a “Chinese” lug, or junk rig. I would not call the mainsail on the “Nautilus travelling canoe” a Chinese lug, or junk sail, because it lacks some of the essential elements of a Chinese lug, even though at first glance it might look like one. But, if John likes to refer to that delightful canoe rig as a “junk rig" or "Chinese lug"  it does not really matter too much, because he has supplied a detailed diagram, so we can all see clearly what it is, and what it will or will not do.

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For the sake of further discussion, in my opinion the special elements which make a lug rig “Chinese” are three-fold, and they are essential to the unique way in which a Chinese lug sail is reefed and handed. In it’s simplest essentials, a Chinese lug sail may be reefed to any desired extent (including lowering completely) by simply slacking the halyard, the handed or reefed part of the sail being secured by taking the slack out of the spanned sheeting system. 

To achieve this, the sail is divided into panels, bounded by boomlets (or full length “battens”), which are held to the mast by some form of sliding parrel, individually controlled at the leech by sheetlet spans, which in turn are controlled by a sheet. This unique boomlet and sheeting system is what holds down the reefed or handed sail, without the need for reef points, gaskets or any other reefing tackle. (When reefed, one batten sits upon another, the sheetlet span between them becomes slack, the slack is taken in by the sheet, no further attention being necessary to secure the reef). 

Against this, when the halyard is slacked away, there is a corresponding need to hold the bundle or reefed sail up – which gives rise to the third essential element of a Chinese lug: the lifts, which effectively form a support cradle. There needs to be a “mast lift” or else a paired lift, near the forward end of the bundle, and a pair of aft lifts to hold up the other end (sometimes referred to as topping lifts). These lifts, which may be standing or running, are essential as they take the weight of the reefed sail, or bundle, at all times except when the sail is fully extended. You can't do a Chinese reef without the lifts.

So, to identify a lug rig as “Chinese”, in my opinion, there must be boomlets (of some kind) held to the mast by parrels (of some kind), which are individually controlled at the leech by sheetlet spans and sheet (in some arrangement) and supported by lifts at the fore and aft ends of the bundle. Without these elements it won’t reef or hand like a junk and therefore it is not a "junk rig" or “Chinese lug” (regardless of what anyone may infer by reading the thoughts or looking at the diagrams of Baden-Powell, Worcester or Slocum).

This is a very clumsy definition of a “Chinese lug” or  “junk rig” – an attempt to classify the rig by the manner in which it is reefed.

(Of course, alternatively, one could define a Chinese lug as any kind of lug sail which has been observed on a Chinese vessel by someone in the past. That would be simple, but also it would be useless).

Of course, there are many possible different shapes and forms of the junk rig, both in ancient and modern times, and many possible embellishments, for example lazy jacks, special running parrels, port-and-starboard sheeting systems, built-in camber etc etc which can be added to improve the suitability of the rig.

Definition

To be a correctly classified as a Chinese lug it must reef and hand in the unique Chinese way, and to do that there must be some form of the three basic elements: boomlets, sheetlet spans and lifts.

That’s what I think, anyway.