Not all Swallow Boats are BayRaiders!

[Tony]

Well,the New Year started happily enough..I´m extremely happy about the way things are going,CBL-wise.

Johan

Hi, Johan.

You are, of course, right about regional names. Heck, each nation does a TV show about the amusing names “foreigners” give to everyday products. Not everything can be like Shakespeare's rose (which, by any other name......)

Glad your boat is coming on to your liking – if she is anything like Four Sisters you wont be disappointed.
Visit Stockholm?  After reading  Tove Janssen's  “Sommarboken” I've promised myself a trip to the Finnish archipelago next time there is a raid out there. I think Stockholm would be the obvious route in but I haven't worked it out yet.

Slainte mhor!

[Tony]

I'm still not clear why Cardigan is called Cardigan.

       And, to start a row, the sliding gunter IS a lug sail.

Hi, Julian.
 
I bet the residents of Aberteifi  also wonder why it's called Cardigan, too!  I'm more curious about how Poppet Sands got its name. Any ideas?

Oooh! A row about arcane terminology! Good oh!  This is supposed to be a technical thread, after all.... Let me see now. How can we stir this up a bit? Ah, yes. Try this ...
True, a yard usually has only one halyard ....but it is not normally fixed or supported at the ends, either. On the other hand, the lower end of the spar on a Gunter lug sail is either fixed to the mast with jaws – which makes it a gaff - or restrained by the luff rope in some way so that it stays close to the mast – which also makes it a gaff ....or perhaps a club. Either way it has two points of control and so doesn't have the freedom to move independently of the mast the way a yard can.   In short, the Gunter lug was a lugsail in the past but once they tied the forward/windward arm of the yard to the mast for  better windward performance  it ceased to be a yard.
It's a gaff!

 My sources?
“The Eye-Spy Book of Inshore Working Craft” and “The OGA (Trailer Section) Song Book.”
Both, sadly, out of print. ......Ahem.


@Paul Cross.....Spot on with the Cardies

[Michael Rogers]

Can I join in? Just to say that I don't think the point at issue matters all that much. But lets have a good old barney about it.

(Oh no! - it's that junk rig bore again. Humour him, lads.)

Categorically, a junk sail has a yard. This looks surprisingly like a lugsail yard. It has a single halyard BUT, Tony, it does have another 'point of attachment' in the form of a yard parrel, which passes from the yard, round the mast, back through a block on the yard, and down to the deck. This bit of control, additional to the halyard, does NOT make it a gaff.

I suggest that a gaff has jaws, at the mast end of the spar. Anything without jaws, Julian, is a yard: with jaws it's a gaff. The number of halyards doesn't come into it (you mentioned wherries, otherwise I would have). The geometry of a gunter mainsail means that one halyard is enough to hoist the gaff (with jaws - IS there such a thing as a gunter rig without gaff jaws?), which doesn't become a yard for want of another halyard.

I think I've made that sufficiently unclear.

Sources -
'Practical Junk Rig' by Hasler and McCleod
'Jack and Jill and the Hermaphrodite Brig' by Jeremiah Bilgewater (not yet published)
'The DCA Four-part Harmony Shanty and Church Anthem book' (refused publication; available in a plain envelope)

[Julian Swindell]

Hmmm.
Don't think I will start the yawl/ketch argument just yet. But:
1: There is a little known boat from an obscure welsh builder called a BayRaider which has a sliding gunter without jaws on the yard...
2: I have seen sliding gunters with two halyards. One for full sail and one for reefed. Not sure where that fits in the taxonomy, but it is actually quite a good setup.

I have actually got a copy of Dixon Kemps 19th century book on all things yachty which goes into this at some length. I will dig it out if it supports my argument, or fail to find it if it doesn't.

But... I can believe a lug is a yard or a gaff or a gunter or anything, but I really cannot believe there ever was a pop group called the Cardigans. That has got to be an urban myth, surely. (And Val Doonican wore sweaters, not cardigans.)

[Johan Ellingsen]

White stuff still coming down in buckets here..I won´t get into the rig name discussion.
(But I too have an ancient,1878?Boats and Sailing book.Really from the bottom up)

Tony,I was thinking of the Boat Show!-In the 1st instance.Lovely you liked the Tove Jansson book;the tideless thousand-island-scape is the same from Stockholm via the Åland archipelago,to Helsinki.(really to Vyborg,but that´s in Russia now).Compared to my fellow passport-holders,you´ll find the Finns very kindly and unassuming.I´ve never heard a Finn yell at his wife to jump over the bows,to an uncertain fate..and they have this(sorry,only the guys)
habit of sailing dressed for an all-over tan.

Any Swalloweros coming over this way for a bit of a sail,I´d be more than happy to help with practical things!

Johan

[Tony]

To Julian and Roger

“Oh, Ye of little faith....”

Allow me to present irrefutable documentary evidence :-

1.   V. Doonican Esq. In a nice red cardy

2.   A U-Tube link to “The Cardigans” with a little number called “My Favourite Game”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnSuuNg0WB4&feature=fvw   
My personal taste in Swedish girls with Dragon Tattoos is more the Lisbeth Salander  (Noomi Rapace) model  but at my age many things are only of academic interest (Yeah, Right!)  - and for post-punk music I prefer “The Stranglers” any day but there you are....

3.   Picture of S17’s and BayRaiders at Lake Bala  clearly showing gaff jaws and parrels holding the gaff to the mast – well not THAT clearly but if you’ve got a hand lens.....

“M’Lud, I rest my case.”

[Tony]

Tony,I was thinking of the Boat Show!-In the 1st instance.Lovely you liked the Tove Jansson book;the tideless thousand-island-scape is the same from Stockholm via the Åland archipelago,to Helsinki.(really to Vyborg,but that´s in Russia now).

Johan

Hi, Johan.

I am ashamed to admit that I didn’t know Stockholm had a boat show...how insular is that!
However, I am quite serious about trailing the boat out to Finland  –  or the interesting-looking bits of Sweden - if only to have something new to brag about. When is the best time to do such a trip?  I hope its not August as my wife and I have this on-going affair with a Greek Island and will keep on migrating out there each summer until the Government cuts bite hard ... then we wont come back at all!

Στην υγεία σας! 
 
  Aδονις

[Johan Ellingsen]

Tony et al,
The thing about the Stockholm show,it will be the Grand Unveiling of CBL3,I hope!To be called-Svalan(Swallow),or Iris Lykke after my granddaughters-Daisy Grace and 4 Sisters are such nice names.(An ancestor ran a pathetically unsuccessful privateer called Engelen Gabriel during the Great Nordic War-this one shouted down by the female element).As for Great Nordic Sailing-July is the best month,sorry no olive trees or weather guarantee.I always try to start and end my expeditions at www.grinda.se-great food,wonderful sunset dinner terrace!The-I hope-picture attached shows what you can find(not my boat,out of a book),especially in a sneaky shallow-draught boat-I could never get into this kind of place in my heavy long-keeler.
Cheers!
Johan

[Johan Ellingsen]

Tony,

Have you got a good compass mounting idea?Echo-sounder?

Johan

[Tony]

Tony,

Have you got a good compass mounting idea?Echo-sounder?

Johan

Hi Johan.

I have a compass (Silva 70UN ) and GPS (Garmin 76) mounted on removable brackets either side of the hatchway. Easily visible when single handed but sometimes obscured when crew are lounging about.
The VHF is clipped to my lifejacket most of the time and I usually carry a mobile phone in a waterproof pouch on a lanyard around my neck. (If I ever go over the side on a dark winter night I can have a nice chat with my heirs in the 30mins  before  hypothermia gets me.  Now I have a Blackberry I can use the mapping function to let them know where to find the corpse!)
I also have a Plastimo Echofish 400 fish finder. It works well as a depth metre but insists on the presence of huge quantities of fish under the boat. If I turn down the sensitivity it continues to record fish at all depths until the point where it predicts no fish at all. (I am all for optimism but....) I have yet to find a permanent mounting place for the transponder or the hand set. Anywhere in the cockpit is liable to snag the mainsheet or tangle with the anchor warp. I had thought of making a rearward facing consol for all the instruments over the outboard well but this would be ugly and get in the way too much. A through-hull transducer mount would be a good idea if it will work through ply.
Over to you?

[Julian Swindell]

I've got a Garmin GPS and a Silva compass mounted on a plywood piece which slots in in place of the lower washboard. When I'm not using it I hook it on a bracket in the cabin. I'm working on a bracket on the washboard itself so I can use it when it is raining and I want the full washboard in place.
I keep toying with the idea of a depth sounder, but have never convinced myself that I really need more than my marked boat hook to probe the shallows.
A transponder doesn't work through plywood, its got too much air in it. You either have to drill a hole (shudder) or cut out a patch of plywood and replace it with a patch of GRP and then zap through that.

[Tony]

So far 10 BR 20’s have signed up for the Semaine du Golfe. 10 of ‘em!  – and one CBL.
That’s me, that is.      In CBL No.1 Four Sisters.       All on me todd!

Instead of moping around and whinging about how much faster the BRs will be I have decided to do something about it by modifying the CBL a little.  Forward firing torpedo tubes in the best “send a Gunboat” RN tradition  might be just a little anti-social but were finally ruled out on grounds of expense ....even for pre-owned...  and the fact that I can’t even get anyone to take my outdated flares, let alone 200lb of 1945 vintage Amatol. (Could always set ‘em off on Nov. 5th I suppose.) 
This being the case I have decided to think positive (dont laugh) and  increase my sail area by setting my storm jib WITH the balanced lug main on a regular basis.  At the moment it is designed to fly in place of the lug sail in heavy weather – only practical when you know that high winds are expected, before you set off.  In practice the double reefed main is more controllable than a  jib and if I know I am going to get a dusting I don’t often  launch in the first place!  However, setting the jib AND the main develops a nice slot effect and gives at least an extra knot in winds around F3-4. The problem is that, not being designed for this, it fouls the yard when going about and so has to be furled before each tack.  Not so bad, I suppose, but even when furled it can hook over the yard when tacking, restricting the yard so much that it could result in a big problem in anything of a wind, perhaps lead to a knockdown. My solution is a removable bowsprit, as shown. I want to be able to mount and de-mount the thing while sailing – if possible from the cockpit – so the idea needs more work.

Before I waste any more time on it, has anyone tried such a thing? Is basing it on a sort of static club boom going to work?

Pics:
1.    I have photoshopped a bowsprit on to a photo of the CBL with a furled jib.
2.   A dry run flying the jib without the mainsail. Pulls like a horse but fouls everything.
3.   A drawing of how it might work.



www.sailing-in-circles.blogspot.com

[Tony]

Here are the other two pics ( I hope) unless I have crashed the system again.....

[Johan Ellingsen]

Hi Tony,Julian,
(Being the only reachable SB owners with through-deck masts)I have a bit of a discussion with Matt-on my Frances,I have spent 25 fruitless years trying to make the mast fitting watertight-once with quite disastrous results.Matt says the gasket will keep the wet stuff out OK,there being no provision for drainage.Gents,your experience please?

/Johan,still snowbound;wife and self had a 10-mile ice-walk yesterday!

[Tony]

Still snowbound, huh?  Definitely a touch of spring in the air here in Sherwood Forest. Snowdrops and an early Primrose in the garden. Bit of a decision to make, though.... on Wednesday do I paint it or sail it? The boat needs the paint and I need the sail!

As to the mast boot ...there are many paths to what you seek, Grass Hopper, but only one is prepared  for you to follow. Seek, and ye shall find the true path.....
Agh! Enough baloney!
I have yet to solve the problem. 
First attempt was a dry suit neck seal. Just right! fitted tightly over the mast and the deck fitting (mast partner?) Absolutely flexible and totally water tight. Lasted one season. A month of harsh sunshine did for it. Expensive to replace. Do you have a carbon mast? maybe dry suit wrist seals would do better.
Second attempt was self-vulcanising rubber tape - can just be seen in a previous post of mine (picture of my jib flying in the boat park) This had to be wound around the mast, building up layers to fill the gap, making a sort of rubber gasket. This worked ok on land but once sailing the mast worked in its socket and the water fairly rushed in.It also tended to jam the mast making removal difficult.
Present method (seen below ) involves Duct Tape and plastic sheeting. works a treat but ugly as sin. needs a nice oiled canvas tailored boot to hide it.
NB  I am reluctant to employ the traditional method - canvas boot lashed around the mast with sealant to make it water tight as there is a danger of rain water being trapped between it and the mast leading to rot. I like everything to be able to dry out asap.
My ultimate solution might be a rubber neck seal protected from U.V. by a traditional but loose fitting canvas boot.
Most option leak so i have a towel