Arne

PS: I have never been anywhere near wishing for a winch to operate the throat hauling parrel, not even on Johanna’s 48sqm sail.

    

I have been thinking about the use of my winch on the luff hauling parrel and I think what it is really doing is overcoming the friction of the luff hauling parrel being wrapped twice around the mast, and when there is already load on the line. so the loadings I have on the parrel do not necessarily equate to equal loadings on the sail. When I first fitted the sail I was able to tension the luff hauling parrel by hand provided I eased the sail out first. This was mostly because the halyard was always wrapped around the winch. Then when I fitted rope clutches to the halyard and luff hauling parrel the winch was now freed up for a variety of uses, so if I need to adjust the luff hauling parrel while sailing it is very easy, and tempting to simply tension it on the winch.

Just back from a sail on Footprints, and I'm impressed. The two Davids have a very refined product: the build quality and detailing on the sail is excellent, it sets beautifully, and from close reach to run it pulls like a train. David does use a winch to set the throat/luff parrel and has a pair of tack hauling parrels to adjust the balance, which has quite a profound effect on Footprints (and none at all on Fantail).

As Arne points out, Footprints' yard is slung about 10% aft of Fantail's so I'll try that in combination with David's parrel arrangement. 

More to follow... thanks all.

 

Bryan,

my experience has been that it is critical to get the slingpoint far enough aft on the yard, or else the sail gets tail heavy and requires big forces on the throat  and yard hauling parrels (THP and YHP) to peak up the yard. This is more critical on low-AR sails than on those with high AR. Now I have had a close look at both Footprint’s and Fantail’s rig.  David seems to have got it very right, and his sail sets perfectly well. On Fantail the halyard is attached much further forward, probably partly because of the mast rake. If you extend the halyard line from the mast top and through the slingpoint at the yard, shown here, you will notice that on Fantail’s  sail the line points (too) far forward in the sail, unlike on Footprints. This naturally puts higher demand on the THP and YHP. I suggest you try to move the slingpoint aft on the yard, as indicated by the dashed line.

As for how the Chinese did it, some of their sails (Hong Kong rigs) were indeed very unbalanced, and no doubt needed big forces to keep the yard peaked up. My guess is that they got away with it by having a very stout boltrope (as all Chinese sails had), so that none of these peaking-up forces were putting loads on the very fragile sailcloth they used. If there is stress in the sailcloth, just by peaking up the sail, then the boltrope is too weak or elastic, or the sail is flat. With a bit bagginess in the panels, even in the top panels, all loads should be taken by the boltrope.

Arne

Hello Bryan, It would probably be very helpful to you if you can come out on that sail on Footprints sometime soon. Her sail is a real working version of David Tyler's photos. When you are new to the junk rig it is very helpful to have a good look at how other boats are set up and actually sail on other junk rig yachts. I have had my fan shaped sail for 4 years now and have leaned all the tricks for getting things working well. There is a lot of tension involved on my big sail, and my current wooden yard gets a good bend when hard on the wind in a strong breeze. Get in touch if you are in my area and I am very happy to take you out. Even better if you can have Fantail down here and I can have a look at what you have got. But as Paul suggested Annie is probably your best source of information.

Brian, have a look at this photo and the two preceding it in the album, for a very powerful THP that acts mostly on the yard. I used this when I had a fantail sail on Tystie.

Can you show us some photos of what you have now?