Hello Antoine,

Thanks for sending those through. I expect there will many expert opinions coming through and from people who have a lot more knowledge and experience than I do, although I have now had both the traditional PJR rig sail, and the cambered fan shape sail on Footprints. I think that for Aviateur I would go for the fan shaped sail with some camber built in. We have found on Fantail, Footprints, and Tystie that these sails work best with the mast raked forward between 3 to 6 degrees. This provides more opportunity to find the right balance of sail position in relation to the CE of the sail and CLR of the hull. and I know in the case of Footprints the sail set a lot better once I raked the mast forward. I think that even with the junk sail on such design that you would still get good sailing performance, and with the cambered panel fan shaped sail the boat would develop a lot of power both reaching and running. Even though Footprints is a cruising yacht with her cambered panel sail and flat bottom she surfs very readily and we regularly see speeds of 8 to 9 knots when going downwind and we have plenty of sail up. Our top speed to date has been 10.9 knots. Footprints has always had a lot of weather helm but I have been learning that for any off the wind sailing I need to cant the sail across the mast as far as I can so that we now have almost 3 meters (for a 6.3 m boom length) of boom across the mast and this is neutralizing the weather helm and making the sail and boat a lot more controllable.

Apart from the technical difficulty of making the sail itself the junk rig would be easy to put together. Battens, yard and boom could probably all be aluminum but apart from the cost the mast might be best build from carbon for both strength and light weight. I am looking at purchasing a carbon yard for the sail on Footprints to replace my alloy yard which has developed a bend once again. I have found a supplier of Carbon tube here in New Zealand their prices are not too exorbitant.  

I have been a frequent visitor to the Aviateur website and am considering building one of these little boats, not to replace Footprints but in addition to, and as foil to the type of sailing I do on Footprints. I think that these would be fun boats to sail and construction should be fairly easy and quick, although I know from past experience that it always takes twice as long to build a boat than what you expect.

I have also being considering conversion to a junk rig although going more to the fan shaped sail as I have on Footprints with the mast raked forward for balance, and the ability to cant the sail across the mast for downwind work as on Tystie and Footprints. I see though that the designer has now done a smaller version of Aviateur with a cat rig. I think that would be an option I would explore if I was to build one of these boats because you still have the simplicity of a single sail but of a style more suited to the concept of these boats, although a lot more high tech than the junk sail and I expect considerably more cost because unlike a junk sail you would be getting away from DIY.

I agree that it would be much quicker an easier to convert an older boat but in NZ our existing yacht fleet is getting very old and tired with most boats built back in the 70's and 80's, none of which I would want to own. Plus I like the idea of a boat built from plywood. The construction and hull form of Aviateur is very similar to that of Footprint except of course much more beam in the stern sections.

Antoine ALLAIN wrote:Thanks to both of you for answers.

David, thanks for pointing at Selway pionneer. It looks a lot like something I had in mind to draw myself. Only one thing, it seems very heavy and low sail area. I will contact them anyway, as it is very interesting.

Arne, thanks for your advices. I work in a shipyard, and we have a composite shop. I can
definitively get carbone tubes for a not so expensive price and work on composite. I thought that carbon mast would be to stiff but if you say it's OK I will have a look. Johanna's sail proportion looks good as well as your 6,5m's one. I will look how I can fit it on both aviateur and pionneer.

Antoine