Anonymous wrote:
A limit?
Amoy in 1922 after passage from Shanghai to British Columbia, Capt. George Waard.
There’s low yard angle and high balance for you.
Looks like at least 25% balance.
There is a mizzen which is obscured.
Note the witness marks of an upper batten, on main and fore sails, which have evidently been removed.
A blow up shows an array of running parrels.
Where do you reckon the halyard sling points are here?
I imagine the Chinese probably found the limits centuries ago.
(They never thought of splitting it though!)
They appear to be using a bridal of some sort.... you can't always take how you see things rigged on a traditional Chinese junk as "the way" because they often had to work with limited resources and less than ideal materials. So the route and methods they took are not necessarily what we in the west would want to follow.
It's always a case of look, learn and think..... just blindly following is not always going to get us the desired results. A lot of the ways and methods the Chinese (and other original users) used comes more from tradition than any real understanding of the basic principals. This is not to say they are wrong because obviously they mostly are not.
What Arne, David, Slieve and myself are trying to do is to understand the why as well as the how to. Hassler and Vicent Reddish have of course pointed the way but even they did not get every piece of the picture.
We don't always all agree but from the (mostly minor) disagreements often emerges a clearer picture. Sometimes it just a mater of phasing.