The Jib sheeting arrangement had been completely re-done as well as the staysail. now both have been done with thinner sheet lines and elastic to take up teh slack and pull the line out from below decks when the servo arm moves to the slack position. The Jibs use looped sheets and are not tied to the clew of the sail. Works fine, just need to see how the arrangement works on the pond
I also made the fore yards swing more freely… there was a lot of tension on due to the stepped mast the “hinge” line is not straight and i had to adjust the screw eyes to get all teh yards to swing without binding.
Shes also now flying an ensign and a masthead pendant.
Sorry for being dense, just want to make sure i understand your jib setup :). You’ve got a loop of line that the jib can swing back and forth freely on, but the size of the loop changes under servo control (rather than the position of the loop)?
Cruise #3
Had a nice dawn patrole today at our swooping pond in Klatovy in Winds 270/10G15. I was sailing under all sail, Staysail, all Squares and both Jibs. The wind at the pond was a bit confuse and its not the same direction all across the pond either. the further i got to the lee shore the winds turned to the right. This time tacking was almost a no brainer haul tight the main'sl sheets, rudder hard over, wait for bow to come around, braces yards on opposit tack, counter rudder and off she went on the new tack! This was possiblewith no sternboarding when you did it right, some tacks failed in string winds on the first go, but mainly due to the fact that i hadnt braced the yards hard over or the main sail sheet.
I still have to find out what sail setting is giving teh best speed… certainly a fully tightened mainsail is no good as well as hard over braced yards.
What i noticed is that due to the fact that i have 4 yards but only 1 set of braces on the foremast, the unbraced yards were pushed more toward the centerline than the braced yard… i guess that spills a lot of air and thus thrust. I started reducing the yard angle with the stick and the boat sped up thou i had to be careful not to let the sails come aback… these square riggers can stop and start sternboarding in no time at all
I could work to windward too, but it was a hard fight… i guess due to the fact that i didnt get the most from the foresails. Well as you said sheaint no bermudu sloop !
I`m going to add aditional brace lines to see if that helps.
but all in all im starting to get a hang of manouvering this thing i found that for a fixed fore yard bracing i wouldnt use the rudder to maintain course but rather the main’sl sheet rudder input is mostly used to counter gusts and initiate tacks.
im also guessing that she is faster in runs than my footy due to the fact that she doesnt submarine her bow like the K2 in strong winds.
Had a real nice cruise nr. 5 today… until i wore ship in a strong gust and her bow submarined… now this ship unfortunately isn`t as unsinkable as my K2 so after about 1 minute longer with lots of steep heeling she sank… i had to wade the pond in about 12-15°C and 15G20kts wind… not a very pleasant thing to do and it took me almost 45mins in the water to find her again… oh well… guess time will tell if teh electronics survived
here teh video (sorry for teh spotty camera work / seamanship i was doing both at the same time :D) http://www.vimeo.com/6879178
Been lucky Bill! My Electronics work almost completely, the RX seems to be shot,might be get to working again when i have removed all the corrosion from the plugs, and the rudder servo was shot, all else is working… Larne (that`s her name) is already in working condition, waiting for fair winds !
Had another cruise today… unfortunately jitters in the mainsail servo… but oh well ill get it out now and dry it out with WD40 and compressed air. I put a self adhesive window sealant foam strip between hull and deck and was promptly awared with a dry boat this time !
Cruise #8
In my lunch break today i took Larne to the pond and was able to sail the whole pond wind today way from 090/05G10 so the other direction than before and i was happy to beat up pond finally towards the wider area of the pond. There is a lot of weed growing along the shores and that has to be threatened like shoals as it can easily snag the ship and cause a wading retrieval.
i experimented with sail trim and after remembering my little sloop sailing experience and the sailing course i had some 15 years back i thought that the best beating performance can only be had with a) The mainsail sheeted for best beating performance so about 10-15° off centerline b) foresails braced so as to continue on course as close to the wind as possible without using the helm.
So the following procedure for sail trim yielded the best windward performance:
a)Main Sail sheet so to set the boom so as to cross the corner of the quarter deck.
b) Square the braces until bow starts to head up into the wind, then slightly brace them again until hands free sailing is established
To maintain course i was working mainly the fore brace and left helm and mainsail sheet alone. is the bow falls off you square the braces a bit and until it heads up… if it heads up, then brace a bit tighter. The result is a nice speedy beat that gives good windward performance
To change tack from this sail trim was done as follows:
a) slightly square the foresail brace to make the bow head up to the wind
b) fully tighten the mainsail sheet also to make the bow head up
c) Helm over
as the bow starts to swing into the wind
d) gradually brace the yards to full on the old tack (why not earlier? because then it resists the mainsail sheets weathervaneing force)
e)as the bow comes through the wind set the mainsail sheet for best beating performance (i have the sheet on a linear slider on my TX so i just put the slider to the position where the boom is crossing the corner of the deck)
f) as the bow starts falling off the wind on the opposite tack feed in counter helm and when approaching the desired the course square in the foresails to stop the bow form dropping too far off the wind !
g) center the helm when the ship starts moving forward
g) set the fore brace so that the ship continues hands free on the new tack
another cruise at our pond again nice and strong westerlies some where around 270/7G12 or so. In the gusts i was a bit overcanvassed and she was on the verge on putting her lee rail under…but without the gusts she was sailign very nicely and fast making a satisfactory bow wave through the light chop.
sailing on the port tack i was tracking only about 10° right of the centerline of the pond to the north west. So getting up to buoy 1 wasnt difficult, but getting enough sea room to actually weather it on the stbd tack was quite a challenge the opposit buoys are very close to weed and the north west end is also weedy so quite unuseable for about 10 meters, so i had to make the longest possible beat on the port tack up to the weed, tack just in the nick of time, beat back upon teh buoy, tack again before touching it, beat up and then manage to tack back and round it. There is a lee on teh south west side of the pond where bouy 1 lies which doesnt make it eaasier either its so much easier with the Bermuda sloop, but its so much more rewarding when you get around a course you set yourselfe with a square rigged ship!
Im finding to get maximum performance out of te ship on the port tack away from me quite a bit easier than when im on teh stbd tack back towards me for some reason… also i`m loathing not having a slop free yard brace paralellogramm… how can i achieve that ? maybe with counter braces running from the front ? i have enough yard swing but the problem is that once the sail starts going aback the yards swing about 20° back from fully braced position which stops you right there… funny enough thats not so much a problem during tacking as trying to stay close hauled as close as she would lie…
I made yesterday a new set of square sails from the 75g/m² tyvek “paper” i got and just had a go at the pond. Winds from WSW 10G15 Wind was variable between WSW to WNWbW in gusts.
I wanted to try with all eh new sails so i was a bit overcanvassed in teh gusts with the ship putting her lee rail under but in between teh gusts it was ok with Jib, all fore square sails except the course and the spanker.
What can i say about a fitting suit of tyvek sails with a nice stiff leach ?
WOW !
Performance of the ship to windward has increased dramatically !! also tacking was a complete none event… about as difficult as with my sloop footy ! Just throw the rudder over and swing the yards once past the eye of the wind. I didn`t even had to tighten the main sheet from the close hauled position for tacking, just rudder over and yard swing when tacking in a strong gust the main sheet tight would always get her around and so i had a 100% success rate on my tacks
with the ship performing so nicely i had time to heave to, sail backwards, make landfalls at a harbor just south abeam buoy 1 and then backing out again backwards How well the performance was can be shown in the attached pic of the pond, I sailed down the pond and rounded bouy 5 to leeward, and then tacked up pond between the shore and an imaginary line between buoy 5 and 1, kind of sailing up a narrow channel… there is a bank of weeds be between buoy 5 and 3 near the shore that cut the available fairway down to about 3m or so in width… no problem with the new sails
all in all probably the best sailing i had so far !
After the learning experience that i had with Larne i wanted to make something a bit more scale an also a legal footy, as Larne being a tad too long. I also had still a constructo Beginners kit with a solid Hull of The Honourable East India Company packet Brigantine St.Helena of 130tons sitting around in the shelf and whilest being pretty damn small at 1/85 scale she would make a good experiement how small one can go in building very small square riggers it occured to me only after teh fact that she still wont be a race legal footy as she has uses 2 channels for sail control..but oh well :rolleyes: One really could sail her with only 1 sail servo and connect the mainsail sheet to the fore brace servo with a fairlead right under the center positionso its let out most when yards are squared and hauled in when the yards are braced hard… but then one looses the steering effect and i don`t know if tacking will still be possible without independent sheet / brace control.
so here she is
Length on deck 26cm, Displacing all of 370g with a 120g leadshot in the ballast tube… Sailarea isn`t all that big at 6,7dm² but then she is also of pretty narrow beam at only 7,5cm.
Hello guys, after a long ice induced break i`mbackto sailing finaly
i had the cance to give the little St. Helena a real maiden. unfortunately the winds where quite gusty so i hadto reduce teh sail to F&A sails and onyl teh square tops’l so she looked more like a top’l schooner than a proper brigantine
But in any case she sailed very nicely at sub footy size thats quite nice i have to say i`m quite surprised.
yea i mentioned it earlier in the thread there is 2 sail servos, so not regatta legal but you could sail it with 1 servo when you hook the main sail sheet onto teh brace servo, tho it would make manouvering much harder i guess…
well in that case it can be done, but really sailing the little Brigantines is more fun when you have control over each masts sails seperately and thats definitely not footy rules conform… so its rather a "footy sized" Brigantine :D or rather sub footy brigantine :D im currently working of making a proper Footy sized Ship based on the same Hull as St. Helena above im right now building HMAV Bounty in 1/110 scale .. so well see if a fully rigged ship square rigger willl still sail to windwards at that scale.
Finished and maidened Bounty and she sails !
Wearing works all teh time, tacking is a bit harder, but mostly due to sailing in flukey ligth airs and my other square riggers all like a bit of wind for manouvers. But she missed stays only 2 out of 10 times. i cant say yet how high she will point as we sailed her only 2 times from a row boat and so it was hard to judge with your own vantage point in motion too. im adding main stays’ls and stuns’ls as well to get a bit more sail area rigth now it`s only 4,4dm²
it occured to me only after teh fact that she still won
