Annie Hill wrote:
If you sail a schooner with crew, you can pretty much guarantee tacking by having a person stand by the foresail and effectively back it and force the head round.  

But, that's not true self tacking, which I'd prefer to have.

When I read Zebedee can now tack since switching to cambered sails, it confirmed their merit to me. I don't think he ever acknowledged in his articles the boat couldnt tack before. Obviously kept it a secret. I suspect flat panel sailors prefer not talk about that particular fault..  or secretly have bow thrusters installed..

Sam Rossiter wrote:We have a flat sail in good condition and a limited budget.

Is it even worth considering trying to add camber to this existing sail? Or would it be less trouble to start from scratch?

Sam, if your sail is in good condition, then theres no need to start from scratch. What you need to do is:

Remove luff & leach tabbing and any reinforcements

Remove batten pockets

Cut the sail along the existing batten line.

Cut "lenses", this is just pieces of cloth shaped like the cross section of an airplane wing. See Arne's  writings for suggestions or email me if you need more help.

You need to decide if you are going to build the sail using Arne's methods or the "shelf foot" method. The difference for you is simply which way round you attach the "lenses" to the sail. But after that there are ramifications as to how you complete the sail. To keep this short, I recommend that you use Arne's method. As it's the simplest and easiest to understand.

Sew the panels back together as per Arne and then do batten pockets and luff and leach as per Arne.

I'd leave the topmost fanned panels flat.

Odyssey III would be good material for this job. The material need not be the same as that already in the sail.

If you need more assistance feel free to contact me and I'm sure that Arne would also gladly advise you.

Sam Rossiter wrote:We have a flat sail in good condition and a limited budget.

Is it even worth considering trying to add camber to this existing sail? Or would it be less trouble to start from scratch?

There are, as you may have noticed, a lot of different opinions about this subject.  I am no junk rig expert but I have done a lot of sailing on different boats, often without engines.  Whether it is worth adding camber depends in part on what sort of boat you sail and what sort of sailing you do.  If you have a high performance, light displacement boat and love zipping around inshore then getting camber one way or another makes sense, either by adding a shelf foot between the existing panels, or by using the less satisfactory method of hinged battens (your cheapest option).  I consider myself to belong to the Joshua Slocum school of sailing.  It requires patience and forethought.  You sail the boat a bit like a square rigger when approaching restricted waters, head offshore at the slightest sign of inclement  or fluky weather and don't have much of a timetable.  Flat sails are perfectly ok for that sort of sailing but I accept that not everybody wants to sail that way.  So it comes down to your expectations.  If you sewed the shelf foot extensions yourself it wouldn't cost much.  Otherwise, with a limited budget, using alloy battens with Arne's "external" hinges would be the cheapest solution.

Kurt Jon Ulmer wrote:Hi Graham,

Thanks for the vote of confidence.

Miles, yes miles. (mehitabel is trying to get to Tonga - that is, she's been kept late in New Zealand - now looking for a big enough space between winter lows, to escape into.)

Best of luck.

Cheers,

Kurt

And the best of luck to you, too, Kurt.  May mehitabel find her window soon and spread her sails to a steady trade wind before too long.  Perhaps we will cross tracks one of these days.  Returning to New Zealand and the Islands are in my dreams for the future, health permitting.  I should be off south in a few weeks after the Cairns Ukulele Festival, though I have to admit my legs are not working too well at the moment.  I had to crawl around the decks of Risky Business at night on my delivery to Sydney recently and have just discovered that I have very poor reflexes below the knees and possibly degeneration of the balance organs in my head.  Good thing I have junk rig!  Its not so bad being on your hands and knees anyway, very convenient for praying when things get hairy! 

Fair winds, Graham