junk rig, why, advantages?

[Fore and Aft]

Mike Banks nailed it. Not all junk rigs are equal. Gaia has spent 26 years with a junk and has obviously worked out all its idiosyncrasies. For you sloop sailors when you sail on a junk rig for the first time you will notice the seemingly miles of rope tails. That “fantastic” ability to raise and lower the mainsail easily means the mainsheet is attached to the back of every batten. So you imagine how long that mainsheet is on a mainsail on a 40 footer. Most of the time the weight of the junk sail is on a pulley system to raise or lower it.......more rope tail again.
I sail occasionally on a mates Benford Junk Rig Schooner. It really feels like a set and forget rig. There is just no more tweaking to make her go faster, I just hate being passed without trying to tweak something.
Cheers

[Gaia]

Originally Posted by Fore and Aft

Mike Banks nailed it. Not all junk rigs are equal. Gaia has spent 26 years with a junk and has obviously worked out all its idiosyncrasies. For you sloop sailors when you sail on a junk rig for the first time you will notice the seemingly miles of rope tails. That “fantastic” ability to raise and lower the mainsail easily means the mainsheet is attached to the back of every batten. So you imagine how long that mainsheet is on a mainsail on a 40 footer. Most of the time the weight of the junk sail is on a pulley system to raise or lower it.......more rope tail again.
I sail occasionally on a mates Benford Junk Rig Schooner. It really feels like a set and forget rig. There is just no more tweaking to make her go faster, I just hate being passed without trying to tweak something.
Cheers

Does not matter if you are doing the passing (-:

Jim

[dcstrng]

Originally Posted by Gaia

We sailed our Tom Colvin designed Gazelle GAIA around the world...

Jim and Helen sv GAIA

I used to keep Colvin's books by my bedside and poured over them, still have them -- lusted after a Gazelle for many years long before I could have afforded one -- I see there are a couple listed in Yachtworld... hmmmmm....

[DanielCZ]

two things that I would like to know about as I read and look into it:
1. do you turn the sails in any way to adjust to wind direction, and how?
2. with a aluminium or metal mast, as the ropes bash agains the mast, is it not driving you crazy, is it not like having a ringing bell on the boat?

[Gaia]

Originally Posted by DanielCZ

two things that I would like to know about as I read and look into it:
1. do you turn the sails in any way to adjust to wind direction, and how?
2. with a aluminium or metal mast, as the ropes bash agains the mast, is it not driving you crazy, is it not like having a ringing bell on the boat?

Guess I am dense but I do not understand the 'turning' of the sails' Sails are set as normal using the sheets. In our case being unstayed we can let the sails out when running to be at right angle to the wind. No shrouds to interfere. We can also let the sail further forward of the mast to aid in balancing the CofE.

And re the ropes banging the mast, normally not a problem accept occasionally at anchor. We then tie them away from the mast. Which everyone would do that, especially those with SS halyards in a marina.

Does that answer the questions?

Jim

[charliehows]

junk rig will continue to have a limited enthusiast audience but it is as outmoded as the square rig by the simple combination of 'new' technologies such as wire rigging, aluminium spars and dacron sails allowing larger and much more efficient sail areas. For a while I thought there might be some interesting innovations using carbon fibre masts - an obvious application which might overcome the inherent design problems of an unsupported mast - but havent seen anything yet, probably due to the costs of experimenting with such an unpromising rig.
I've run into a couple of 'gonna do's recently who were planning to wreck nice little sloops with a mickey mouse junk conversion - gives us all a bad name...

[Arthurwg]

Originally Posted by psk125

F&A seems to nail it. The junk rig enables easy changes in sail area to suit conditions, but generally call for stubby masts to avoid putting all the gear weight up too high. This reduces overall sail area, so the boat is slower. Newer junk rig designs may be lighter and more aerodynamic, but upwind seems to still be a big hurdle. Modern slab reefing or r/f provides the same ability to adjust sail area but avoids the heavy gear and windage associated with it while providing better performance on all points of sail. Gentlemen may not sail to windward, but sometimes getting off a lee shore is a requirement. "1421"(https://www.amazon.com/1421-Year-Chi.../dp/0061564893) brings up what might have happened to junks that didn't go upwind well. They seem to have left pieces of themselves on Africa's east coast, in Australia and California. Shipwrecked crew might have settled in Rhode Island and Central America. Rigs have improved since then.

Might not have been the rigs but the hull design. I believe I read somewhere that the boats were designed for coastwise sailing rather than voyaging, in part because the owners did not want the crew leaving.

[DanielCZ]

To me the system is appealing for various reasons, one of them being the fact I just need one sail, that is a cost factor, other one is the simplicity and reduction of parts that could break, safety and cost factor. What I'm sort of afraid is, should the sail be torn, repairing it during a voyage seems to me to be quite a hassle. But that is just me theoretising.
That the concept gets a "new wind" is clear to see with the Beneteau development see here the prototype 2014 https://youtu.be/H1cEFP_H4Rk
And here this product:
https://youtu.be/QGJ02kEDtXI
Its not a junk rig per say but clearly inspired, thou I personally don't like things to get even more complicated, if it works simply...

it seems to be and will most probably be a taste thing, to every one his own, to me this is really appealing, and I would as well love to see some tutorials on youtube or elsewhere, as well as reviews of the Junk rigs, that is sort of missing.

[Fore and Aft]

I think you can forget the cost factor. Any Junk sail and mast will be have to be custom made. But you can buy plenty of second hand sloop sails and yacht rigs.
The new wind sail looks interesting, but what do you do in a light breeze? Its nice to be able to fly a kite when the breeze dies.
I am amazed there is not much on Youtube. When I was a "Junkie" fellow junkies would rave on how good the rig was. In fact I would say they were on par with compost toilet advocates.
Cheers

[GBR134]

Seems to me you sacrifice aerodynamic efficiency and performance in return for a quirky look. No idea of the costs but can’t see why it’d be cheaper. I read the 50 reasons and not one of them seemed compelling. I’m with Charlie Hows except I thing the square riggers were more efficient.

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by Fore and Aft

Mike Banks nailed it. Not all junk rigs are equal. Gaia has spent 26 years with a junk and has obviously worked out all its idiosyncrasies. For you sloop sailors when you sail on a junk rig for the first time you will notice the seemingly miles of rope tails. That “fantastic” ability to raise and lower the mainsail easily means the mainsheet is attached to the back of every batten. So you imagine how long that mainsheet is on a mainsail on a 40 footer. Most of the time the weight of the junk sail is on a pulley system to raise or lower it.......more rope tail again.
I sail occasionally on a mates Benford Junk Rig Schooner. It really feels like a set and forget rig. There is just no more tweaking to make her go faster, I just hate being passed without trying to tweak something.
Cheers

I read the "50 reasons..." and I can accept them, most of them, but some are somewhat dubious (such as safer for kids because there are is nothing to pinch little fingers, What, no mainsheet? Or that you cannot get hit on the head because it is higher??) and it is not hard to imagine that many of them could be applied to a Marconi rig as well. We often sail our boat under main alone, and with full length battens it wouldn't be much different than a junk.

But the main reason I go sailing is because I love the feel of a boat which is performing well. It is hard to envision that a boat with a flat sail, a heavy mast, and miles of line tangling everywhere is going to give me that feeling, let alone the fact that few junks have efficient foils below the water line so that rules out a lot of points of sail. You might as well put up a barn door on a barge.

An example: In Trinidad one year there was a rally organized from Chag Bay to Pointe a Pierre, something like 25 miles. Both going down and coming back the next day (after a morning calm) we had wind ahead of the beam, less than 16 knots of wind, but no tacking was required. Amongst the cruisers in Trinidad was a die hard junky with a pretty nice boat, who was a fanatic about the benefits of his boat, somewhat like the ones who wrote "50 reasons..." He entered the rally but ended up motoring because his boat was so disgracefully slow compared to all the sloops, cutters, ketches, etc. We were all short handed, most of us were double handing our boats. On the junk, a 50 footer, they had a crew of 5. The benefits of the junk rig did not help him; he had to motor to make it in time for the festivities.

So, I don't mind that the junkies are such advocates. Each to his own. But I love my boat and how it sails and I really think that for simplicity, we can match them.

Oh, and by the way, we tore some sails on that trip, but repaired them onboard overnight, so even that claim about ability to repair a sail isn't totally on the side of the junk, and I can tell you that taking the sail off to fix it was a lot simpler than doing the same on a junk.

http://wingssaillogbookpages.blogspo...erre-race.html

[Arthurwg]

Just now reading Joshua Slocum's "Voyage of the Liberdade." He sailed from Brazil to New York with that rig, in a boat he built himself.

[Paul Howard]

I did a 40,000 plus mile circumnavigation of the world on a steel 30ft. boat that I adapted to the junk rig while building it in the back yard according to an easy to follow formula. There were four of us on board, husband, wife and two children 4 and 6years old at start. Took us five years to get home again.

The junk rig was easy to handle, had plenty of sail area (about 10% more area than the standard bemuda sloop rig for that fin and skeg rudder hull. My wife could reef while I was asleep below by slacking off the halyard and snugging up a couple lines. We made good many passages of more than 20 days, with the longest passage at 30 days harbour to harbour. We had no electric autopilot but a hydrovane self-steering gear. It was easy to heave-to in heavy weather and the un-stayed mast made the hull very forgiving and comfortable. In light winds below ten knots, the rig is slow to windward, but no need for a spinaker and pole off the wind, as that big sail holds its shape on every point of sail.
It was a good rig for us at that time and for those passages.

[ross.bendigo]

In his immensely readable book "Structure, or why things don't fall down", Prof J.E.Gordon devotes a chapter to pressure vessels and naturally compares boilers to junk rigs, hang gliders, bats and pterodactyl wings.
Basically:
"the force or tension in the membrane, per unit width, is pr,the product of the wind pressure (p) and the radius of curvature (r) of the membrane. Thus the more sharply the membrane is curved the less the force in it will be, and so the load which it puts upon the supporting framework will also be diminished.When the wind blows, the pressure caused by the wind increases as the square of the wind velocity.In a strong wind the pressure becomes very high indeed and so do the loads upon the supporting structure. According to our Western, engineering-school, way of thinking there is very little we can do about this, for we would rather be seen dead than allow the membrane – whether it be a sail or part of an aeroplane or whatever – to bulge appreciably between its supports. Of course, we can never manage to keep the fabric perfectly flat, but we do everything we can to keep it as taut as possible.What we actually do is to make the supporting framework strong and heavy and expensive and hope that it won’t break – which of course it often does."
Professor Gordon should be required reading for any structural designer, or naval designer. He started as a naval architect and was at the forefront of early composite work. He was also one of Elon Musk's influences. There's even a pro-bono pdf of "Structures.." on the net.
His quotes from Weston Martyr at the start is priceless:
"There is an interesting problem which has to be solved by the designer of every sailing vessel It is: What is the best method of preventing the ship from flinging her spars overboard? Opinion on this point is divided. There are two schools of thought: the Eastern and the Western schools. In the West we think the best way of keeping the masts in the ship is to fasten them rigidly in position with a complicated system of shrouds and stays. The disciples of the Eastern school hold that this is all nonsense – besides being very expensive. They stand a tall and rickety mast on end, set upon it vast areas of gunny mats, bamboo matting or anything else that comes to hand and then keep the whole business erect by the power of faith. At least, I have never been able to discover any other power interesting itself in the miracle. "
Weston Martyr, The Southseaman

[StuM]

Originally Posted by ross.bendigo

Professor Gordon should be required reading for any structural designer, or naval designer. He started as a naval architect and was at the forefront of early composite work. He was also one of Elon Musk's influences. There's even a pro-bono pdf of "Structures.." on the net.

He should be required reading for a much broader spectrum of the population that just that


I first came across him when I picked up his "The New Science of Strong Materials Or Why You Don't Fall Through the Floor" many years ago in a second hand book shop. Fascinating reading for anyone with an enquiring mind!



I found "Structures..." a bit later and enjoyed it just as much.