Anyone Ever Sail a Cat with an Aerorig?

[owly]

Originally Posted by wingssail

Simple it's not, and it doesn't look too rugged to me either.

I am constantly amazed at the extent people go to try to invent something which works better and more efficiently and a standard sloop rig on a stayed mast.

I wouldn't expect you to see the utter simplicity of this rig.... it's not obvious at a casual glance. The battens, contrary to your suggestion are extremely rugged, I've never heard of one failing. They are light weight, but due to the two sides that are joined, they are very strong. They also are simple to build and a one time project. The main and fore sail are laced to each batten via grommets. The sail is never removed except to replace it when it's worn out. The sail reefs instantly on any point of sail, simply by letting go some halyard, the lower panels dropping neatly, and holding the sail from flogging. No reefing / furling equipment is needed. A single sheet controls both the fore and main sails, and the loading is quite light due to the balance area. There is no sail track & cars, no need for a traveler. The halyard is usually a multiple part tackle, and even winches are not needed. No vang, no preventer, whisker pole, etc needed, no standing rigging, no mast bearings like on the Ballestron, and a far lighter rig. The sail carries the load to the battens, and thus has only a fraction of the loading as most sails. The camber is set by the battens and how the sail is laced into them.... That tension can be changed only by changing it one batten at a time when raising the sail.... but can be set up to be done very easily..... You don't change the camber constantly obviously. The extremely light fabric loading means far lighter "canvas" can be used. The sail itself is a flat fabric panel, with hemming, etc, along the edges, grommets and / or loops in the proper locations, something anybody can build..... on the beach if necessary. You could sail the Atlantic with polytarp sails if need be. In any case you don't need many thousands of dollars worth of high tech sails stowed below... The one main and foresail serve for everything. You aren't stuck in some remote port waiting for your sailmaker in Providence or San Francisco to make you a new sail.... If you blow out a sail, anybody can make one from what you can buy locally.
Clearly this isn't a racing rig, It's for voyaging, but they can acquit themselves very well.


Clearly you see things completely differently from me.... but that's OK. The Bermuda rig appears to be a simple rig.... until you sail one, and realize that it is both quite complex and expensive. My priorities are probably completely different from yours. This is a rig that suits my needs far better than the Ballestron or the Bermuda rig.... or really any other.



To each his own.......... You are probably an avid follower of the America's Cup.... while I avidly follow the GGR, and the Jester Challenge.... Your ideal is probably a 45 foot Lagoon or Leopard, etc, mine is a 30' epoxy ply boat that doesn't even have standing headroom in the bridge deck cabin.... A junk rig is not for you...... It is the rig for me........ I haven't walked a mile in your shoes...nor have you walked a mile in mine. My criteria are different from yours, so obviously the boats and rigs that appeal to me will be different from those that appeal to you.......for entirely different reasons.

H.W.

[cyan]

Originally Posted by wingssail

I'm constantly amazed at the extent people go to try to invent something which works better and more efficiently and a standard sloop rig on a stayed mast.

There are those of us with countless pages (and napkins) of sketches which fly in the face of accepted designs. The mind of the inventor is the type that truly enjoys freedom from the shackles of conventional wisdom.
Apparently this is amazing to some.

[owly]

Originally Posted by cyan

There are those of us with countless pages (and napkins) of sketches which fly in the face of accepted designs. The mind of the inventor is the type that truly enjoys freedom from the shackles of conventional wisdom.
Apparently this is amazing to some.

I was an avid admirer of Buckminster Fuller growing up. I admired his honest clear headed thinking as a philosopher, as well as his unique outside the box thinking as an engineer. He didn't pursue unique solutions to be different, but because they often offered real advantages over conventional solutions. Back when other kids were wild about the Beetles and the stones, doing drugs and going to concerts and sports events, I was wandering the woods afoot, and building canoes, paddling the rivers, sailing with friends, taking survival trips into the back country with no food for as much as a week at a time. I was inventing things, doing photography working in my darkroom, trying to connect with people on the far side of the world on my ham radio set, and countless other things that most kids never even considered. By 16, I had climbed Mt Hood twice, South Sister once, Mount Adams and Mount St Helens, and explored numerous caves. I read Saturday Review every week to read Bucky's column, and then subscribed to World when Saturday Review folded, and I haunted the college libraries to read his work.


Needless to say his mindset infected me deeply....... so deeply that I can't imagine looking at things "conventionally".


In sailing, catamarans are the ONLY boat for me, but my interest is in worldwide voyaging, not coastal sailing. The idea of spending 6 weeks doing a crossing doesn't disturb me in the least... The wilderness is my element, and the oceans are the greatest wilderness on earth.



I'm not a conformist, and I am unimpressed with "convention". Things are done they way they are for a reason(s), that that reason(s) , often is NOT because it is the best or the most efficient way of doing things. That however does not mean that I discard anything conventional........ There are many good ideas that are conventional thinking, but when you put on the blinders and don't look outside the box, you tend to miss things, and do things mindlessly, just because it the way it has always been done. Imagine for example the state English Cuisine would be in if people hadn't been open to Indian and French influence ;-).



I've always regarded the Bermuda rig as something of an abortion with it's huge amount of standing rigging limiting the angle of the sail, with the large forces on a huge sail, sail cars, and tracks, travelers, vangs, winches, and a mast that will go by the boards if a single one of dozens of components fail. Reefing is such a pain that people have designed furlers to make it easier. Tacking can be real pain.... so much so that most "sailors" motor a lot rather than tacking.


A Bermuda rigged cutter flying all sail is a beautiful thing to behold, graceful and elegant. It just "looks right"...... But it looks right because it's what we are familiar with, and it is right in many ways, as can be seen by it's performance in the racing circuit. It is however anything but rugged and reliable, and is anything but inexpensive, anything but simple to sail.


The biggest thing you can do to improve things is to get rid of the standing rigging, but that eliminates being able to use stay tension to control sail shape. A gaffer or a lug rig can put a lot of sail up because it isn't triangular. A lugger has balance that reduces the forces of the boom swinging in a tack or gybe. A lugger puts sail forward of the mast where a foresail would be. Both often use rope parrels instead of tracks and cars, and neither normally use tension on the sheet or a vang to shape the sail. Neither of course are racing rigs usually..


Blondie Hassler brought the junk rig to the west..... Though Joshua Slocum also used it on the Libridadi. Hassler sailed his 25 foot junk rigged Nordic Folkboat Jester to second place in the 1960 (first) Ostar, sailing the wrong way across the North Atlantic..."in bedroom slippers". He had no cockpit, but sailed the boat from a round hatch with a pram hood, never leaving the cabin with more than his upper body the whole trip. Jester had an inefficient flat panel junk rig with no camber at all, but it brought him across in second place to Francis Chichester in his 40 foot Gypsy Moth III.


Since that time, a few people in the west have refined and improved the junk rig steadily. There is no money in it.......... The big money people pour millions into the Bermuda rig, and in wing sails and foils.......... useless technology for anything but racing....... at this point. The whole world follows along, and they lead the way.



The JRA (Junk Rig Association) exists, not because they are admirers of Chinese culture and engineering and seek to keep it alive, but because the junk rig has real world value that they recognize. Men like Pete Hill and Roger Taylor have sailed junk rigs tens of thousands of miles into the most hostile seas of the world, and continue to do so to this day. Blondie Hassler's flat panel junk rig worked, but left a lot to be desired in terms of efficiency. Those who followed him developed methods for achieving camber.... a few people working on a shoestring independently. Jointed battens, sewn in camber using several methods. Then the split junk rig came into being with the object of keeping the mast from distorting sail shape on one tack. A man by the name of Slieve McGalliard innovated that. Later came the Aero Junk I posted the photos of, which addressed two issues. One was moving the slipstream of the mast so it didn't effect the flow over the main, the other was to allow the camber to be changed at will.... and a third of course is that a flat sail could be used and would lay against the battens to get it's shape.

The soft wing sail was originally a side development of the same group....


The billionaires have not gotten into this, and never will......... and that's a good thing. The benefits are obvious to me...........for MY needs. The ability to tack simply by putting the tiller over and then make an adjustment to sheet tension, and reef in seconds with one hand without getting up or spilling your coffee has value to me, as does the elimination of many thousands of dollars worth of hardware and rigging..... It's exactly what I want........... your mileage may vary.


H.W.

[Muddy Boat]

Originally Posted by owly

The Ballestron rig is a very heavy rig, and complex with it's rotating mast...

... Like the Ballestron rig, one sheet controls the works, and there is an unstayed mast. Unlike the Ballesron rig, there is no sail track.

Not sure on what boat you have your experience with these rigs, but I have an Aerorig on my Hirondelle Family. I have never considered it (a stick with a deck bearing) particularly complex! Also, one sheet, no track.

I have the side by side magazine comparison report of 2 Hirondelle Families and the Aerorig outperformed by quite some margin, especially off the wind.

Ironically, the biggest issue I have had is to find a replacement jib furler with an internal halyard. I can live with that!

[owly]

Originally Posted by Muddy Boat

Not sure on what boat you have your experience with these rigs, but I have an Aerorig on my Hirondelle Family. I have never considered it (a stick with a deck bearing) particularly complex! Also, one sheet, no track.

I have the side by side magazine comparison report of 2 Hirondelle Families and the Aerorig outperformed by quite some margin, especially off the wind.

Ironically, the biggest issue I have had is to find a replacement jib furler with an internal halyard. I can live with that!

I have no experience with these..... I've seen many photos and read articles, but I've never seen one up close and personal.



I'm an admirer of Rob Denny's work. Rob he uses this rig exclusively for his HarryProa craft. Personally I dislike the idea of a mast on bearings....... by the way there must be two bearings, not just as "deck bearing". I had thought that there was a sail track and cars on these, just as on a Bermuda rig....... Try to find anything in detail online... It of course also has a short traveler for the jib, and requires furling mechanisms.



I think I made the reasons I favor the Aerojunk pretty clear. Paul named it in a way that gives a nod to the Aerorig in case you didn't notice. It has all of the advantages of the Aerorig, but doesn't require sails that cost many thousands of dollars, or require two massive bearings.... not something I feel are a good thing in a salt water environment. It's controlled with one sheet, as is the Aerorig, and furled effortlessly without any mechanism at all. It also can be a very rectangular rig, meaning that it can carry more sail for the height of the mast, and as I mentioned before the loads are carried not across the entire sail, but from batten to batten, the battens transferring the load to the mast. It has exactly the same balance benefit as the Aerorig.


For me, once the battens are made.... a simple undertaking, and the mast either built or purchased, the year to year cost is very low, and in a crisis, I won't be sitting in Sri Lanka trying to import a new sail from San Francisco. It's a high tech rig made from "low tech", readily available materials. In a pinch, a polytarp is going to get you home from wherever you are if that's the only material available. To me that's worth a great deal. I can see sailing home from Lagos with a sail made from Dashikis purchased in the souk and stitched together.... I'll be in Barbados while you are still waiting for a sail and fighting through the import process.


Clearly what matters to me is different from what matters to you....



H.W.

[blubaju]

Originally Posted by Muddy Boat

Not sure on what boat you have your experience with these rigs, but I have an Aerorig on my Hirondelle Family. I have never considered it (a stick with a deck bearing) particularly complex! Also, one sheet, no track.

....

Maybe I expressed myself in English not so well, it is a foreign language to me. I was very pleased with my Aerorig on my 47ft Catamaran. Very much I liked the simplicity, one sheet controls almost all. Reefing lines might be a little more difficult to handle. I do regret not to have one on my current Cat, but the designer did not like to redesign his plans and rebuilding my carbon stick today is to expensive, maybe next cat I'll have one again

[mark_morwood]

Originally Posted by owly

I'm an admirer of Rob Denny's work. Rob he uses this rig exclusively for his HarryProa craft.

A minor correction. Rob's latest designs now have freestanding schooner rigs. There are however a number of previous generation HarryProa's sailing happily and effectively with Aerorigs.

Here are a couple of links:

Blinddate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=wftyqI2aJlo
Rarebird: “Rare Bird” – AUSTRALIA – Harryproa

[ross.bendigo]

Originally Posted by Greg4cocokai

Here’s a pretty one near me in MexicoAttachment 180635Attachment 180636

This looks like Kurt Hughes' Sarabi 56. To my opinion one of the most pleasing hull designs there is. Sarabi did dismast; description and pics are on Kurt Hughes blog pages. General opinion was that mast carbon thickness wasn't up to specification. I've also seen some Freedom Cat 40s with similar breaks. It's interesting to me that the breaks, in Sarabi at least, happened in moderate seas while motoring with reefed sails. I know unstayed carbon masts are designed to bend but are they designed for constant whipping in and out of wave troughs; perhaps they are. Under sail they bend and stay bent. Constant whipping seems to me a recipe for delamination and failure in fatigue fracture. I could be wrong, my knowlege of fatigue comes from J. E. Gordon's "Structures or Why Things Don't Fall Down" and Nevil Shute's "No Highway in The Sky" so I'm not really up to argument. Some form of light stay during extended motoring might be in order. Gotta love the ballestrons in any case. Had a close look at Visionarry, a Rob Denney proa, in Melbourne a few years ago. Impressive. Light and fast for its size.