Old twelves never die.....

I thought some of you guys might like to see an old boat of mine. She?s a 1 metre long semi-scale 12 metre yacht that I built when I was 17. This boat is 14 years old!
The photos were taken today on Botany Bay in about 10 - 15 knots (her first sail in a long time!) and she was using all the original RC gear and original (tired) sails.
Its funny how a nice afternoons sailing can make the world seem right!

Troy

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That is a great looking boat.

How do you control the genoa?

was thinking about the same…genoa how???

nice boat

Wis

if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it!

http://wismerhell.esmartdesign.com/index.htm

troy i am with them.
how do you control that front sail. I am thinking winch, and a what?
cougar
great looking boat

The genoa control is actually pretty simple. I modified a servo to run as a winch. It will continuously spin. The further you push the stick the faster (and with more torque) it turns. Between where the continuous loop sheet leaves the drum and where it exits the deck, I have a very small, lightweight block which is connected to a piece of elastic which keeps tension on the sheet.
I use a four channel set and the genoa is on left stick left & right
The main is controlled by the same system with a slightly smaller drum.

Troy

A question-I modified a servo like that and I could not get it to stop creeping. I would adjust the trim to stop the creep and as the boat got farther away it would very slowly start to creep. It wasn’t much of a problem unless I was close-hauled and it decided to creep in. Then things got kind of tight. Do you have this problem? I was using Airtronics gear.

Thanks
Don
Vancouver Island

Beautiful! On the genoa did you find it necessarry to induce slack in the windward sheet? On asy spins I’ve done I always needed a system to induce slack in the windward sheet as I gybed…

Doug Lord
–High Technology Sailing/Racing

Don ? I did have some problem with a bit of creep but that could be dialed out with trim. When the servo is a part I set the stick and trim to center and dial out any creep using the potentiometer in the servo, just turn it till the motor stops spinning. When it did start to creep out it can be dialed out with trim. When the system is working properly there is more than enough torque to hold both jib and main from easing off. The servo I used was a Futaba FP-S148, don?t know about Airtronics gear sorry.

Doug ? There is a little bit of slack in the system but it is taken out by the block on the elastic. The load on this is very light. And I mean very light. The block is about 1/3 the size and weight of a Pekabe block and the elastic just pulls hard enough to get the slack out of the windward sheet. Because the leeward sheet is pulled tight by the sail the system stays tangle free. Why did you need to have slack in the windward sheet and how did you achieve this?

Troy

Tranth, I did two asymetrical prototypes: a 68" trimaran and a 53" model of the Melges 24. Both had long(12" on the Melges) retractable bow poles and the sail had to be pulled around the forestay each gybe. It simply would not work with just a continuous loop because of the amount of slack required. So I had Rob Guyatt make up a drum with four winding paths: two small and two large. The two large were for the continous loop; the two small worked to induce and remove slack as the boat gybed. So it all worked with a single winch.There is a sketch on my website.Worked flawlesly thru a wide sheeting range after I added the quad drum.

Doug Lord
–High Technology Sailing/Racing