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Tuesday 14 September 2010

Illusion's First Sail


I attended the HBBR Cotwolds rally on September 11th/12th and I'm very grateful to Phill OxBorrow who lent me the lug sail from his canoe Tonawanda and helped me jury rig Illusion.

I used a windsurf mast cut down to just over 3m (10ft) planning that it could fit inside the hull in the future - it is 37% back from the bow just like the Paradox.

The previous day I drilled a hole at the top and screwed two cleats at the base of the mast, all very temporary and experimental.  So I rummaged around in my box of boat fittings and found a suitable block which I tied to the mast; we tied the lugsail tack to the cleats, I found a length of rope in the car boot and 2 minutes later we hauled the sail up the mast. Phil lent me his boom which we tied at each end of the sail and quickly rigged up a block 2/3rds along the boom for the sheet.

The leeboard was temporarily clamped to the port gunwale with G-clamps; the position was a rough guess. The first 40 seconds of the video are of me messing around clamping the board vertically.

By sheer chance it all fitted very well and as you can see she sailed well. The sensation is very much like a windsurfer, which I have sailed on that lake 25 years ago, picking up speed in the F3/4 gusts which are always as random as the Lottery,

Is she planing?  Reports on the web suggest that lightweight flat-bottomed sharpies can indeed plane and exceed their displacement hull speed and it certainly felt like she was getting close to planing. Next time I'll take a GPS to record the speed.

Tacking was slow because the sheeting was not ideal, also I found it difficult to twist around whilst sitting on the bottom. Improved sheeting and a low seat will improve things.

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