Glassing timber sailboat foils for smoothness and accuracy
Make excellent and accurate foils (centreboard, leeboard, keel or rudder blade) adding way more performance for not much effort and no cost – series
Make excellent and accurate foils (centreboard, leeboard, keel or rudder blade) adding way more performance for not much effort and no cost – series
I found myself at Foiling Week 2018 in Sydney. There are two groups involved in foiling with a large gulf between them. The out and out high expense group who see themselves as the future of sailing. The other group is much more interesting to me as it looks at the stability and handling advantages of foiling which are only just starting to be explored.
A good centreboard or leeboard is as important as a good sail. We use a simple templates for quick and accurate shaping. Making without the templates … several were feeling that they couldn’t make them to a greater accuracy than 1/16th of an inch.
We have some real information about relative performance of a Balance Lug Rigged Viola Canoe vs Lasers and RS Aeros.
Chasse Maree magazine published an interview with Michael “The quest for performance is not a matter of materials, it’s a state of mind” Translated by Christine deMerchant
Brushes, Squeegees and Rollers all have advantages and disadvantages for boatbuilding epoxy coating. This explains and provides useful tips.
How common are Epoxy Resin allergies and what are there strategies for reducing the chance of building an allergy? I will discuss building strategies, materials choices and useful production work practices.
Things to do while home isolation and social distancing are the norm
Replace yard on a lug mainsail with a carbon windsurf mast. Replacing a standard wooden yard for the top of the balance lug sail on The Goat Island Skiff with a piece cut from a windsurfer mast.
One recurring problem with plywood foils, centreboards, leeboards and rudders is that over time they tend to break unexpectedly.
Controlling sail twist on any boat is critical for performance. Here we describe two methods for getting more performance all round and safer handling downwind.
It is not difficult to build a hydrofoil stabilised dinghy – Also a model for information sharing so everyone is not always reinventing the wheel
Hydrofoil sailing is possible for homebuilt boats. It can be used to reduce heeling so the crew doesn’t have to work so hard.
This boat was intended to be a minimal river and open water racer for two lightweight experienced sailors (or one larger one) – big sail for the fluctuating conditions, light enough to plane consistently and cartop portable – it was also based on the Oz Goose built with incredible attention to detail. It requires a small amount of work to complete.
Why explained. My most popular design is the Goat Island Skiff a light plywood planing sailing dinghy that is devastatingly fast in most conditions – not so surprising when you realise a lot of the development was because of racing dinghy advances but intended to avoid the skyrocketing costs of sailing participation.
Joost Engelen has provided another hugely useful file for setting up the lug rig on the Viola 14 canoe.
Just back from Butuan, Mindanao, Philippines where the PHBYC group I belong to has helped college students build 10 Oz Goose sailboats to initiate collegiate sailing at the fraction of the cost of commercially available boats.
College build 20 boats – The PHBYC yearly boatbuilding program is 20 Oz Goose sailboats to start a sailing curriculum for the Cadet training. These are young engineers.