Neil Tanner wrote:Hey Jeff....I hope you don't mind me asking a few questions about your new boat or making comments from an outsiders view point. You have had some concerns about the mast. Looking at the photos you've posted and profiles from the Norsea 27 site, it appears to me that the mast for the junk conversion is in the same spot as the original mast. How is the junk rigged? From your pictures, it looks like there is a bowsprit. Was she rigged after the conversion to include a headsail? And reading your other post about Seablossoms delay, it sounds like you are finding a few issues with the rig. I guess what I am wondering and leading up to is maybe the former owner didn't spend time working out a good layout for a junk conversion and opted for the easiest and not so right instead. Your present mast for example...how did the former owner come up with the size? It sounds like you are making corrections to things you are discovering that don't seems right. I know you are anxious to sail, but I believe you are doing the right thing by taking the time now and looking at everything thing and seeing if its right or if you can make it better. Wishing you all the best.
Eek!
No, Neil, I don't mind you asking these questions, but I sure hate thinking about the implications. I hadn't thought what I was looking at through very well.
Yes, I believe that the mast is in its original location. It would be very hard to move it; there is a hatch right in front of it, and it (the hatch) is so much a part of the design that its footprint is molded into the deck.
Yes, the rigging included a headsail, running backstays, and a forestay. There was no mast lift, no luff hauling parrell, and the topping lifts didn't render freely under the boom / bottom batten (on this sail it is definitely a heavy spar, one would surely think "boom" when one looks at it) but rather made fast to cleats on either side of the spar.
The halyard fall didn't go down the "chimney" (per PJR) but angled out to the side deck where there had been an existing block and then fed back to a winch and on to a cleat. The yard hauling parrell angled out from the port side of the sail and did approximately the same thing the halyard did.
I would have clearly been impossible to let the sail out to 90 degrees for a run. Between the backstays, the yard hauling parrell, and the halyard... well, you can see.
I've been putting blocks on the deck and blocks on the masthead to enable a conventional, as I understand it, junk rig on here, but...
What do I do about the mast? It ain't moving. I have no clue how the original owner calculated its size, maybe figured what would constitute "hell for stout" and multiplied by two. I could move the mast slightly forward by getting about a 5" aluminum flagpole and mounting it at the forward edge of this dinner-plate-sized hole in my deck, but that's about it.
This is really scary. I've blown the whole of my money on this project, and if it doesn't work out I have no way to recover. It was an inheritance, I'm retired on a veteran's disability and Social Security disability (from the same wounds) and between the two of them don't make enough to recover from all I've spent on this project.
Of course, I've never sailed it. Born sucker.
On the other hand, (he said with his fingers crossed) I do have a photo of her sailing without a foresail, and she appears to look fine. This photo is from some issue of JRA Newsletter, although I've never gone and found it. And I do have a document that says she showed up on her own bottom at Fiji back in the '80's some time. Maybe it will work out all right after I get the various blocks and line bags where I want them.
I hope.
Jeff