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Bowsprit and rig redesign |
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One of the major projects on the boat was adding a short bowsprit. My friend Josh helped me laminate up some purple heart and my friend Larry helped me install it in the boat one day. You might ask why someone would do this. Well, a lot of boats designed in this era have a good deal of weather helm. It's actually important to have some weather helm because then if you let go of the tiller the boat rounds up and stalls which is a good safety feature. But too much weather helm decreases sailing performance and it gets tiring to drive the boat. By adding a short bowsprit (extending 16 inches off the bow) the center of effort (CE) of the headsail moved forward 16 inches, the CE of the whole sailplan moved forward about 8 inches. Moving the CE forward will decrease weather helm because there is greater force pushing the bow of the boat to leeward resulting from a greater lever arm between the center of lateral resistance of the hull and the CE. A bonus is that since I was making all new sails for the boat eventually I could redesign each sail so that the CE could be a couple inches lower and still have the clew at the same position relative to the shrouds which increases stability. Downwind sailing performance is improved because the foresail now extends out further so it presents more of itself to the wind. A few inches here and there made a huge difference - the boat has practically neutral helm in a wide range of conditions. As the wind picks up it definitely has a little weather helm (2 or 3 degrees maybe). All that performance and the boat is more stable too! All the time spent sifting through formulas, crunching numbers, and woodworking paid off. |
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