despite rain on saturdaynight we managed to test sail ankle biter in some cracking good wind and on a surface like glass. the lowered steering does nothing but go exactlywhere you point itand the yacht is very stable. when the wind got up a bit I changed UP to a 4msail and with the bigger sail her performance really kicked off
on the downwind runs the tyres actually screamed. this allerted the CL 5 sailors ,who didnt want to look like wimps and they rerigged and came back out to chase me.
Im pleased to announce that Ive finally whipped up a mini that will keep up with crazy travs OTT upwind and almost beat it downwind. Its nice to be back in a yacht that scares me again
sorry for the poor photo, this was the 3m sail

Looks like another fine example of your minimalist design philosophy there Paul.

I hope you are posting construction photos and maybe some drawings.
Cheers Cisco

lachlan3556 said...

Very nice little machine there Paul. Good to hear the project was a success and what reasons do you attribute the greater performance to?

This is doing nothing to turn me off building a Lefroy mini either mate

first of all is the lowering of the centre of gravity . in the photo you can see that a major proportion of you body is now lower than the axle centres of the wheels.
the mast is then shorter, the boom lower, or you can add more mast and add a bit more sail. the mast step is lower and shorter so the mast starts flexing(absorbing gusts and vibrations/bumps) sooner.
Ive moved my weight forward by 40mm which means that the steering is very reactive ie sensitive . it goes where you point it WHEN you point it. this is probably not good for a complete beginner.
the mini has been a great machine to experiment with rear wheel angles because you can make a range of axle sets to trial when you race. Ive got a set that removes the layover and gives vertical wheels , I suspect they will work well in light winds. laying the wheels over basically makes the tyres bite harder in the turns. I found that I could turn as hard as the CL 5's in a hard gybe. part of the secret is to sheet in and force the yacht to drift through the turns, rather than sheeting out and easing the yacht through.
the tyres had previously been on WEE , WEE, WEE for 3 years with little wear , but after this weekend I will only get 1 more race day out of them. you could see the rubber on the lake where they were being forced around a turn.
It will be interesting to see how the yacht turns on the claypan,a s the surface is more like sailing on asphalt
WARNING WILL ROBINSON! the ground clearance is minimal, 40mm, so it really only sits a good smooth hard beach or the like, even shallow wheel ruts on the causeway at Lefroy hit the bottom. definitely not a candidate for a canvas seat

Yes sir! It looks great. looking forward to seeing those PIC's. In reading the posts I have learned alot and continue to learn. This learnen keeps me yearnen for some land sailen. Even it it is in a large parking lot. I can hardly wait. I'm sure I'll probably draw a crowd asking a bunch of questions and who knows maybe something will come of it, a club never can tell.

when you get rain on a thick salt crust, accompanied by wind it basically smooths it all out , with a cool overcast day following there was no fresh salt forming so it stays smooth and clean. it was rollerskating quality that day. salt is best if dried out slow with the occasional windy rain shower. really hot weather creates a layer of slushy slop like sticky wet snowthat you need a bucket of wind to sail through

there are actually very few true salt lakes that are hard enough.
In OZ there is GAirdner, Lefroy, Victoria(just). others tend to be an occasional event , or the hard pan is relatively inaccesible. our local Kite buggies prefer to sail on softer stuff.
Once near Kalgoorlie, they took 10 years to pump a thick crust onto a local lake, but when it dried out the salt dissolved down into the water table in only 2 years.
the hydrodynamics of salt lake surfaces is a science in its own right.
Even Bonneville is a man-made surface due to so much salt being removed .they now pump into a very long pond and then compact and groom the surface each season