Anonymous wrote:

It's interesting, I think, how similar this sail plan is to Jester's. If that had been somewhat larger, with cambered panels, it would have performed much better, and Blondie might not have thought it necessary to try designing any more shapes, maybe?

For 3 years I'm enjoying my little junk Circé, and I'm still very pleased of this sail plan.
I must have been very lucky because for my first sailplan, it performed very well on every directions et sets up easily .
I've uploaded the original sailplan, with all the stains of coffee and blood from the workshop of my sailmaker friend.

Its main characteristics :
- 24m² in 7 panels
- mast balance 18%
- the boom and the lower 4 battens at an angle of 12° from the horizontal
- batten #5 at 19°, batten #6 at 28° and the yard at 38°
- the yard is short compared to the battens, 258cm vs 395cm for the longest batten.
- one halyard,
- one running luff hauling parrel from the batten 6, round the mast to batten 5 and down to the deck
- one yard hauling parrel
- one standing mast parrel

Raising the sail is no problem, I just need to pull the LHP until the creases disappear. The YHP is useful when heavily reefed, with the full sail I just remove the slack.

I should have made the boom and the batten #1 longer, they have too much positive stagger and I would have had a little more sail area.
The curved luff is pretty, but I'm not sure it is useful.

Overall it's a very userfriendly sailplan. I think the low angle and short yard helps a lot in the setting.

Merci pour les conseils Éric, je les mettrais en pratique à ma prochaine sortie.

Thomas

Congratulations, Thomas!
You have every reason to be proud of that job.

You could well keep it like that all summer. If I dare suggest any changes that would be to the sheet. I found the Pilmer sheet that you use to be quite good on my Malena. Being 3-part, it had little friction in it and in addition some anti-twist.

However, with a reef or two in the sail, the twist in Malena’s sail rose quite a bit, just as I spot in your sail. I wanted to reduce or do away with that twist for two reasons:

• ·         With little twist, the whole sail will set at correct angle to the wind and produce more drive with less heel.
• ·         With little or no twist. The sail would be more tolerant to early gybing. With lots of twist, the lower part of the sail, starts a gybe before the rest (‘Chinese gybe’).

What I came up with is something I call ‘The Johanna-style sheet’. I have used this on my last four boats, and I think this sheet type makes my sails work better. The downside is that it will take up more sheet space, so it is unlikely that you can sheet the furled bundle to the centreline. I get away with it by tying the sheet-bundle to the side-deck. As long as I can sheet the sail in for close-hauled sailing with three or two panels set, I am happy.

Going to weather.
A small, light boat like yours, with a fin keel, surely is a challenge to make sail to windward in a chop (just as my Malena was). First of all, I learned to reef the sail to keep the boat heeling no more than around 20°. Then the sheet was eased a bit, and I fell off a bit from the standard pointing angle. Speed has priority over pointing angle on such a boat, to avoid making excessive leeway.

Good luck!
Arne

PS:
Here are some notes on some upgrades I recently made to the Johanna sheet.
https://bit.ly/2Zc6eCe

Thomas,

A little more about the rig, which I like a lot.

• ·         Your dividing of the sail into seven panels (unlike Jester’s sail with six panels), is in my view an improvement. The load on the cloth and battens will be lower, and the luff(s) will stand straighter. In addition, the reef steps will be smaller, but still big enough.
• ·         The Pilmer-type 3-part sheet appears to suit the planform perfectly, giving some anti-twist.  Way too often I see junks, even small ones, with 5- or even 6-part sheets. The added friction both makes hoisting sail harder, and in light winds the sail will be less willing to swing out.
• ·         I applaud (of course) the use of telltales  -  something that I constantly nag about.

I wonder if you could tell a bit more about how you did to create the camber. In addition, I suggest you check the actual amount of camber, as shown on the photo below.

Anyway, I congratulate you with a successful conversion and wish you lots of happy sailing.

Arne

PS: Now I read through the whole thread, and got a better idea of how you did it. The planform of the sail looks more like the original Jester sailplan than Weaverbird's. That calls for more work when sewing, but the end result surely looks good.

I would still like to see the resulting camber.