D: May I introduce the idea of a ply/foam/ply deck for Sib-Lim? I’m still a bit concerned about getting enough sailing stiffness and stability with such shoal draught, and I would like to make the deck as light as possible and as low as possible. If the deck is of 6mm ply/25mm structural foam/6mm ply, it will avoid the weight of deep-sectioned deck beams and maximise the headroom. With this style of deck, and my current design, I can get 5ft 5in headroom on the centreline. This is about what I have over my galley, and I’m quite comfortable with that, with my air draught of 5ft 9in. I don’t think my Sadler 25 had as much as 5ft 5in.
A: I can see your point, David. The problem is ensuring that it stays laminated. The sun in NZ is very fierce and there are more than a few boats around that have had the foam come away from the wood due to the difference in expansion and contraction. Then there is the added irritation that occurs whenever you want to add any deck fittings. One of the reasons I want a wooden boat is so that I can screw things into it after the event. I have to confess, I like deck beams: they do give a very reassuring sense of strength. And if I made them from kahikatea, they wouldn't be that heavy. I do like the idea of an insulation layer, but the method I'd been thinking of was building the deck beams, attaching the headlining of whatever to them, putting insulation between them and then the plywood on top. I can be happy with 5ft 5in, especially with a pram hood where tall people can stand up for a minute or two before sitting down.
D: Did you notice how I’d widened the forward end of the cockpit to over 5ft, and dispensed with sidedecks, so that you could sit right out to the weather side and to weather of the tiller to steer? The seats are angled, too, so that you face a little more forward and don’t crick your neck. This is the tiller equivalent of the twin wheels that big posh boats fit so that the helmsman can see where to go, over the curve of the sidedeck and past the rig. We’d have to put a shallow triangular sectioned footbar on the cockpit sole, down the centreline.
A: Oh, that's why they have two wheels! I'd always wondered. To be honest, I didn't realise that you had widened the cockpit, but then most of the lovely little images you send me have no scale on them. (How true it is, even for someone as non-visual as I, that one picture is worth a thousand words!)
I hadn't had time to comment on the 'view from the port quarter' that you sent me, but if I had, I would have asked about the now-eliminated side decks. I hadn't quite appreciated that the tillers were so close to the centreline, but of course, it's obvious now that they can easily be used in a fairly conventional manner. Indeed for someone with my LOA, they are probably more user-friendly than a single one, especially with the wide stern. The foot bar also makes sense when one is hauling on a sheet, in a wide cockpit like this one. Not being able to brace oneself can be quite dangerous. I have problems, even with Fantail's relatively narrow cockpit, at times.
What I like about this layout, is that it will be much easier to move from cockpit to deck. I would envisage deck boxes acting as a step at the forward end. These would also make comfortable seats and provide rope stowage, a la Badger. An idea that worked wonderfully well: I haven't come up with anything remotely so usable on F.
D: So the cockpit is quite wide, which you may or may not like. If you don’t, you could fit a kind of stub tiller to the centre of a crossbar mounted at the forward ends of the tillers. But that would take up cockpit space, and you couldn’t hinge the tillers up out of the way.
A: I don't think I really have an opinion on the width of the cockpit. I can see it being a great asset at junkets with lots of people on board. I have much more of an issue with a cockpit that has no 'sides' than whether it is wide or narrow. On a well-heeled boat I find it quite frightening to have the sea only inches away from the cockpit side deck. The tiff seems to show a reassuring bulwark. I know that wide sterns induce surfing and I'd prefer to have a boat that doesn't surf. Too scary and needs too much concentration. But I can always reef! Talking of extreme eventualities (well, you never know, do you?) would the twin rudders make any difference to using a Series drogue?
Is there a bridgedeck? It doesn't look like it. I like bridge decks.
D: I think you either go for low AR, fanned and not too cambered, or you go for high AR, Van Loan/LC, with quite deep camber. The latter is probably the better performer, so long as the boat has enough stiffness to carry it, and is better for balance, furling and deep reefing too. I didn’t think Tystie had enough stiffness, to begin with, but now I’ve gone high AR, and found that she can carry that kind of sail, I’ve changed my mind. Doesn’t look as pretty as a fantail sail, though.
A: One of the things I really like about La Chica's sails is that the running luff hauling parrels are almost redundant. They set up quite slack. Having bent one of my battens because of the loads from the original set up (twice around the mast), I am a little disenchanted with them. To be fair, however, my present system needs much less heaving.
I agree that the fantail sail is the prettier of the two, but do have a couple of continuing issues. I set up the boom as per your design: 1m above deck with the forward end 1m forward to the centreline of the mast. All well and good. But the lower panel always has a crease in it. I can eliminate this by moving the boom forward about another 200mm, but the result of that is that its after end is dramatically lowered and swipes me in the cockpit. Unfortunately, this is unacceptable to the point of being dangerous, so I have to live with the crease. Neither Footprints nor Tystie seems to have had this issue.
As for stiffness: LC is anything but and nor, for that matter, is Zebedee, but they both have quite HAR, deeply-cambered sails. I think it's watching them sail that has made me in favour of HAR once again. After all, once the sail is reefed, the aspect ratio of the rig is no longer high!