Last year a design comp was started, how about this year we kick around some ideas if any one needs some help with something landyachting.
Go as radical as you like and see what happens.....

Hi Joe,
I have seen a similar set up for roller furling mainsails on larger yachts with a rotating main sail foil set up parallel behind the mast so it should work for you.

The main drawback is that it messes you aerodynamics up a bit.

There are "in mast" rollerfurling systems too but that would blow your budget right out the door. Cheers Cisco.

Joe I sailed once on a yacht that had a chinese junk mainsail and a roller furling jib
I was impressed at the time at how easy it was to handle
The sheet loads are low as the sail is partially balanced the sail area is easily changed as is the furling
Worth consideration as the rig has a lot of virtues
There has been quite a bit of work done on this rig by westerners and it has been well proven
It is quite low tech and therefore should be quite economical to set up

I think you might be getting more complicated than you need! There have been plenty of day sailing boats with rotating masts for furling. it just needs a base bearing to rotate on and a collar at a height bit below the base of the sail. Your MIG wire drum can have either a continuous loop to pull on to roll it up, or a singele line, in which case pulling the mainsheet will unfurl it, and pulling the control line, and cleating wherever you want will give the size of sail you want at the time.

The disadvantage is that as you ful it the centre of effort moves forward so there may be some imbalance (possibly not on your sailwagon), in the case of a race yacht, the lack of battens is a difficulty, although I had a yacht marketed by Chrysler called a Man O War which had vertical battens and just this system. It worked fine but looked a bit strange.
Now if you did away with your jib as such and made a schooner with 2 more or less vertical masts, both on roller furlers you could have whatever balance of sail size you wanted! Big on the back, both the same, big on the front etc etc etc. now this would suit Pauls wet boat too!

Easily reefable, readily droppable , low down grunt, cheap to make and fix,low sheet loads, centre of effort remains the same laterally when reefed
The description of what 1.2 billion chinese have known for centuries
The junk rig!!! Actually a form of lug rig also but without the heavy yard and its extra strings to pull Set up right a junk rig has only two controls that does everything the haliard and sheet

The junk rig that I sailed on had the sheetlets as they were called linked up to one sheet with small deadeyes so effectively there was only one sheet and one haliard to control the whole thing To reef it could not be simpler let out a bit of haliard
however much you wanted and that was it
To furl it let it all out No heaving or pulling No wildly flapping canvas as the long balanced battens took care of all that and the sail dropped into lazy jacks which furled the sail perfectly
A single handed sailors dream The roller fuling jib was only used to give extra area in light winds The only downside that I could see was it would not point as high as a marconi rig
Gentlemen dont bash to windward anyway it spills the drinks!

Finally got it up. The black line is the sail , the dotted line is your marconi, the red line is how far you can alter the rig , mainly for upwind or downwind sailing. your controling sheet is the rear Main sheet, but the leading sheet can be moved fore and aft or port and starboard to give differing abilities.
when I get the chance I'll put one of my lug sails onto a mini, and see wat happens

Hiko said...

Gentlemen dont bash to windward anyway it spills the drinks!

Oh, is that why the guys that I sailed with just tossed the cork over the side and passed the rum bottle around?

Joe, what Paul is talking about is what they call a Lugger rig...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lugger
As we have discussed one of your problems is that you needed a rig that could rapidly be furled or got rid of in times of emergencies or with other people around like kids.
The Lugger, Gaff, Lateen, Crabclaw and Junk rigs all have the problem of what do you do with it when it is lowered as this will block your deck area, and then still have some sort of cloth flapping around.

Hiko, thanks but could you edit your junk rigs for me you have a space after rigs .and before the dot, it wont work , just a typo....cheers joe

arso,..... it seems to me to be four possible setups

Gizmo gave me the first idea, fibre mast, sewn envelope sail, furling device, no boom,
no mast stays. similar set up to hobie bravo. one rope controls furl , one rope control sail tension.seemingly to me simple and safe....How well would it go over/compared to my current rigging

I then tarted it up a bit by wanting to keep my ally mast and jib, and placing a parallel mast, to operate a main sail in the Gizmo method. And keep the jib option. In my mind it was the best that i could imagine. A bit more complex ,I realize, but it has server me well. I have never had an emergency situation and i think it could be very iffy/dangerous

Landyacht, then came up with his drawings and ideas and i must admit i cant argue against them, they do seem to be appropriate, workable, interesting and in synk with the project's aesthetics.
On a water based boat one must tack and jibe. My mast is located at the extreme front of the cart. I don't really have to zig zag as a boat does, however as a road rounds a bend, so my wind direction will change, and there are cross valley wind directional changes also. Which can be compensated for with the normal triangular sail set up. One question, How can a sail that the leading edge protrudes past the mast alignment, realign to a wind shift of 180 degrees without flattening against the mast. thus causing grief

Hiko, came up with the Junk rig, a bit similar [to my mind] to Pauls, but i really do like it. Its rustic and nostalgic and i recon would present well in the middle of no-where on the mainland. In light orange it would be the cherry on the cake. And its a little out of left field , i like that, immensely. Its even sorta sexy for an old bugger like me.
Ive googled in images "junk rig" and selected a few examples from the first 10 pages, mainly on small boats and kyacks. And looked at the junk rig pages on the web. Its impressive to say the least.
Junks never seem to be going anywhere in a hurry, similar the Dowes of the nile, they just mozy along. [here i should say i have a long trip in mind for next year] im keeping it real quite ssshhhhh!!!!! Aussie pride could be at stake.
So i need to, with your help, rig my craft in the best, most proficient way, now.
I have no experience, Im out of my comfort zone , so convince me , whats the best.

Thanks giz for starting this very interesting [for me] post. and if anyone else wants to contribute , please do.

With the junk rig the sail is always on the same side of the mast. Sort of seems like it would not be very efficient, but it has worked for the last how many thousand years?
Very efficient, they go upwind well and about the easiest thing in the world to control. The "mainsheet goes to the "sheetlets" and you have one rope to control. To reduce sail are just let the whole lot down by one or more battens. It's easiest if you then throw a couple of ties around the lowest batten which is in effect the boom and the batten you have reefed to, and just carry on!
For some weird reason they seem to like to be made of unsophisticated cloth (as do the crab claws) and blue poly tarp works incredibly well. The thread line along the line of the battens. As the saying goes "Strange but true"

the lug rig does much the same. if you were on one long tack/leg for the day you could decide at the start of the day which side to rig on. when you tack you simply get a line of the mast in the sail. It doesnt noticably affect the performance of the rig. sorry i couldnt photograph the rig today -no wind .
If you could post a drawing with measurements of you mast/chassis set up I could work on a more detailed set of sail drawings. I may even have something recuttable to take it to a next level

Just a change of direction...
Has anyone ever had aluminium scaff tube bent to about 60 degrees [ from straight] or does it split and crack? It can have a broad radius 300mm if needed rather than a tight bend like exhaust benders give. (Just a job i'm working on)

Gizmo,
if you find a machine shop where they do heat treatments, perhaps they can heat and bend it for you then give it the required heat treatment to regain its properties. Not being that good with Aluminium I'm not sure what re-treating will do. So you would need to ask this question of them as well.


My background is in low carbon steels.

Good luck!

Gizmo said...

I contacted a bull bar maker this morning and said the bend could be done with a T1 grade alloy (very soft) but not with the higher tensile alloy T5 & T6 (scaff tube) as they will split and tear apart at the bend. The best they might be able to do with that alloy is 10-15 deg.

Thats odd , T5 is annealled specifically for bending tight radii.(hence no good for landyachts. I would suggest going to an ally fabricator rather that a bullbar bloke as the job you need doing is run of the mill straightforward stuff, in T5