Pete is discussing his plans for his rig with Slieve and me, and has sent us two drawings and a photo (which are now in "Box", in "members' drawings"), and these notes:
"I have now come up with the rig for my new boat. It is a modified version of Poppy's rig. The changes in the proportions are dictated by the positioning of the mast and the CE. I am building half wishbones out of laminated wood with a "horseshoe" to hold them to the mast. The main will be a flat sail, loose footed and attached at the luff to the horseshoe and to the batten at the leach. The jib is also flat and loose footed with a laminated boomlet to control the shape (omitted from the drawing for clarity). The boomlet and luff of the jib will be attached to the batten. The leech of the jib will held by the boomlet, which will be controlled by a fixed line to the horseshoe. I plan to put light battens in both sails to help prevent flogging. The camber of the jib is the same as poppy's and the main will have 9%, but this can be varied by the tension in the leach. The "reverse" yard is David Tylers idea, which I like as it gives more balance when deep reefed and should suffer less from the head falling off as it will be controlled by the sheet. The yard will be straight with a a little curvature in the top of the sails."
And then in response to some comments from me:
"1. Yes, I think you are right that the control of the yard outweighs any loss in efficiency for ocean sailing. The yard does have to be on the opposite side to the battens.
2. I am making the battens square (see the photo). They are made up of 3, 5mm laminations, a 15mm spacer and then another 3 x 5 mm laminations. The space between the spacers is filled with expanding foam and I will cover it all with light fibreglass cloth.
4. I don't want a shelf foot, but I am planning a sail catcher attached to the bottom of jib and main (but not the boom) which should control too much droopiness.
I don't have time to experiment with a dinghy rig but I will try out a test panel with a couple of battens in the near future.
If you think any of this would interest the members then please put it on the web site."
My view is that Pete is going right out into uncharted waters with this idea, and I would have wanted to do a dinghy rig first. I have a reservation about the torsional strength of the battens - there will need to be a downhaul attached to the "horseshoe" on the centreline, opposing the upwards pull of the luff and leech when reefed, and this situation will tend to twist the battens, unlike most rigs, where the battens are in bending only.