as I recall, and it's been a while, Russell Brown uses  a roller reefing jib at each bow to bring the balance forward when close hauled or reaching.

Since a junk rig could be fully stayed on a pacific proa you could do the same thing, wouldn't even need much of a jib if you used a split junk, or you could use a reddish rig and a huge jib.

You'd have to use double sheets but that shouldn't be a big deal in a proa, remember, they're not going over your head, or even over the boat, any time a sheet wasn't being used it would be out over the water on the lee side of the boat.

Bill

Well part of the point is to see what the experts like you are saying?  Why would it work? Why wouldn’t it work?  Did you think of X?  And so on.  Should I just do the ‘standard’ and build a cat or tri?    That is what has been happening, and I thank everyone who has (or will) contribute.

Why consider a HP?

Intelligent infusion promises to be fast build and light for the strength and fairly mess/fairing free.  It is not as cheap as epoxy/glass and ply however.  As always trade offs. . .   But build speed is certainly a thing, as ‘even if my time is free, it is not without value.’

HP proas can be built lighter than a cat or tri because all the real loads are on the LW hull between the beams where the masts and sails are.  And light means easy to power electrically, or otherwise.   Easier to sail in light breezes means less motoring and also favors electric power, or just not using fuel.   As an aside, batteries for 30kW should come in at around 450 ish lbs with a container and BMS if I go the Tesla route.   Not great, but not horrible either, considering many diesel pieces/parts and fuel are not exactly light either.

Should sail fastish.  Even the HP cruisers can do wind speed on certain points of sail, at least up to 20 knots or so from those that have 'em.  After that I do believe the bows will start to dive per what I have read.  

Set up for single handing.  Not a lot of moving about or things to do.  And what is ‘to do’ can be done from the helm including anchoring.  And the helm is dead center fore/aft so about the safest place one can be.  Proof will be in the pudding here if it works as advertised for a small one if I this route.

Why not a HP?

Maneuvering really is the big one I hear from just about everyone, and it seems quite a valid point.  So I am going to see on the HP forum how those with the actual big HPs deal / think about this.  I can talk about 360 drive and so on but that is just theory, and the realities of sailing probably trump theory.   Please do keep finding darts to throw here. 

Longer for given accommodations.  Yup.  And longer is more expensive to dock even if I I do go folding ama.  Further marina’s will likely be in my future for a least a few years after it it is built.  That said if it less hours to build?  Then, that also counters quite a fair number of years of additional marina fees as well, depending.  One reason I need to try build a little one.  Quite a few NAs seem to think their way is fast(est) and they cannot all be right. :P  That said, it is possible to have decent accommodations – HP is not the same as a JZero.  

Sailing on edge?  So here I would say not with a cruising HP. And since that is what I am eventually considering I should be good.  I mean Blind Date is a 50’ HP and charters sight impaired first time sailors for example.  It can’t be an always on the edge sort of boat, and the (admittedly few) videos back that up.

Probably not junk riggable without some major experimenting.  So Annie and Graham I think are calling it here in that the convolutions of making the JR work, especially in bad conditions, with shunting are probably not worth it on a proa.   Incidentally, my thoughts for JR were that I could get a bit more SA/D for light winds, use (and fix with) low cost materials, have easy reefing, and if a panel was damaged = not fatal, which is a pretty nice feature if you are cruising I would think.       

Edit:

Just to add here, assume 2-3 people living aboard and wanting to not be on top of each other 24/7.  Hence  the 40'+. 

Hull choice for batteries?  I am back and forth on this.  I am leaning toward not the LW hull with masts on it due to lightning.  That side might have cheapish 'disposable' (and separate) power (cheap e-bike batteries, cheap inverter, cheap mppt and 2-3 solar panels) since no major loads would be there anyway.  LED lighting, usb chargers and done.  Maybe an outlet or two for notebooks or whatever. 

I confess that I just don't get this idea at all.  Surely, the whole point of a proa, as Graham pointed out, is that it's a high performance sailing machine, which, I would have thought, is the antithesis of a liveaboard home. The weight of the batteries alone, in a boat with electric power, would be considerable.

A boat that will require more room to tack? Added to its considerable beam, this could make it awkward sailing up rivers and through areas with coral.  The beam (marinas apart - and who can either afford or wants to spend much time in a marina?) probably won't be much of an issue in the Pacific, but the idea of taking a 60ft proa into some of the old, European harbours and then trying to secure it alongside a stone wall with a 6m tidal range would be daunting.  But if you intend to stay in open anchorages 'far from the madding crowd', then the footprint of the boat won't be that much of an issue.

But surely the whole point of junk rig is to be able to avoid deck work, which a shunting proa appears to provide in spades!  Or maybe the ease of reefing is the major appeal here.  But I feel I am missing something.

If you mean Richard Woods form sailingcatamarans.com I've built one of his Duo Dinghys, he does come off as a bit uptight, but of the 3 sets of plans I've bought his were by far the best written and easiest to follow and he was interested and great about getting back to me quickly with info and help. 

I can relate to not wanting to buy from someone you don't care for, when I was researching proas almost all the information I could find was in forum posts and about every third post was Troy Denning bad mouthing someone else's boat, now I really have to work at taking the man seriously.

 You asked about double sheets, thats having a seperate sheet and sheeting point for each side of the sail, usually because the sheetlets can't be passed around the leach of the sail, pretty much the only option on a shunter.

There are a lot of bits and bobs on a junk sail, enough that I would never have made sense of it without a lot of reading and some hands on practice, still figuring out what some lines do, just discovered yesterday that pulling the lower luff hauling parrel as tight as it'll go gives about a 50% boost in efficiency in very light air, I'm starting to think Blondie Hasler should have called his book The Infinitely Adjustable Junk Rig :)

when shunting, the cross beams on a proa take only a tiny fraction of the stresses that the cross beams on a catamaran have to endure, so the Pacific proa form does lend itself to folding or telescoping crossbeams as long as you don't plan on tacking, I think I'd want the option, just in case.

If you haven't seen her yet check out Inigo Wijnen's Gaia's Dream  a 70' proa that's circumnavigated and can haul 12 tons of cargo, that's right, a 70' ship that can haul a whole 12 tons of freight :) 

Edit, oops, my bad, a whole 7 tons of freight :D

Bill

 I've seen a big proa, moored on the Pittwater, Australia, and the thought of bringing it into harbour is enough to put me right off proas.

Oh, I can see that boat on its mooring from where I am sitting, and I can tell you it does not move very often. No idea about the reason for that though.

On the proa front I need to say that I know Rob Denny (of Harryproa) pretty well and have a lot of respect for his designs. He thinks well outside the box and is not afraid to fail. Or succeed of course. 

Right now he is working on a triscaph (as one does) amongst other things.

His "intelligent infusion" is also pretty clever and can allow rapid construction, if you dont mind using resins.

Most of his designs can have different windward hulls which can allow you to do a day boat and later add accomodation BUT

The strength of the proa is its long easily driven hull and light weight / low stress however as David points out long vessels are expensive to berth, and there are fewer moorings for longer boats.

I have seen a video of Rob happily shunting through moored boats on the Brisbane river without stress ..... but he IS used to sailing proas.

Anyway I would urge a look at the Harryproa website or the harryproa yahoo group for no other reason than that its extremely interesting.

And remember that to get the multihull advantage it really really really has to be light. Really light, with the vast empty spaces kept empty. Otherwise you might as well have a monohull. 

And for cruising while astronomical speeds are possible, its generally too noisy to sleep below much above 14 knots. 

Cheers