A design similar to Illusion

I have been discussing other mini-Paradox designs with Paul Raymond who sent me his design based upon Matt Layden's design for Around In Ten design. There is more rocker than Illusion, obviously Matt designed this model as heavy displacement for rough seas, capable of carrying supplies for an extended voyage.

Paul tried using Carene 2008 but could not get a variable flare angle on the sides. He created this model in Rhino (a CAD modeller) and may transfer it to FreeShip.

If you have visited the Around In Ten site you may be thinking that since Illusion is 10ft long I might go completely nuts and try to sail her around the World. I may have a few crazy ideas, but I'm not a nutter with a death wish. A trip down the river with my HBBR friends is far more enjoyable!

Making a sail for Illusion

Phil OxBorrow cut down a Mirror sail to a lug sail for his 16ft canoe. He lent it to me and it worked very well on Illusion so I decided to make a copy knowing that Mirror sails are easily and cheaply available. Ian Hylton from the DCA kindly sent me a spare Mirror sail in return for a donation to the Lifeboats Charity, that I happily made.

Here is Phil's sail - you can't see the seams but it is cut along the 3rd seam leaving the bottom 3 panels.

And here is my prototype cut with a peak about 1ft higher than the 3rd seam and a steeper angle. This will give slightly more area and a slight benefit on sheltered rivers:

The mast length is limited to a tad over 10ft/3m as I intended it to stow inside the boat. In hindsight a slightly longer length would allow me to use more of the Mirror sail's area; however a standard windsurf mast extension gives me extra length (I may need to reinforce the glassfibre mast at the foot).

The yard is aluminium recycled from a shower enclosure. It is lightweight and should be strong enough. For the boom I will laminate two spare lengths of 26mm x 12mm which is the regular door jam size in the UK. That should have the right balance of strength and light weight - the sail attaches at the clew and tack and the sheet will be at the end of the boom, so there will be very little bending moment and I don't need a heavier boom.

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.