Thread: Beth Sailing Canoe

Finally got her in the water after a weekend of bad weather, lightning, thunderstorms and rain. At least we aren't in Oklahoma where those poor folk got hammered. God be with them.
Anyway, back to my Beth. Had very light to no wind today. She floated right way up which was awesome. Paddled her out into the local reservoir, and caught some light breeze occasionally. Push pull tiller worked well in those conditions, though I do need lots more practice so I move it the right direction. Steering wasn't too quick, it's geared down to about what the plans have for leverage.
Got a video I'll try and upload to YouTube, and pics on my wife's camera to get as well.
Rich

Well the push-pull tiller is not intuitive, but I like the way it leaves room in the cockpit. It has plenty of reach around the mizzen, and is geared low enough to not be too quick, at least in light wind. So far I like it but I only had a light breeze. with practice I should develop muscle memory on it I hope. If not, some wood and epoxy in a weekend and I can put the original design in pretty easily. Jury is still out on this modification Mik.

Need to add some shock cord to hold the daggerboard in place as it kept floating up so I tied it down with the main halyard which is not a long term solution. Need to also add some non-skid inside the cockpit as it was a bit slippery.
The couple of strong puffs I got she got moving nicely. I could feel the rudder vibrating a bit, might need to modify the profile on it. will see if it becomes a problem. The boat paddles well which is not too surprising as it is a canoe. Nice to know for no wind though.

I'd like to be able to lower the mainsail neatly while on the water so I can proceed under mizzen - for fishing! Any ideas anyone? Some sort of lazyjack system that is simple and keeps the sail and spars contained and doesn't let them drop into the water. Shoot me a drawing/pic of any ideas anyone please, or add it here for all to see!
Cheers Rich
21May2013_03.jpg21May2013_02.jpg21May2013_01.jpgIMG_2516.jpg.

hopefully this link works:
IMG2517 - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB8WfKiGcyQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9vnoonZFx0

Not great videos sorry, and there was hardly any wind, but you can at least see it floats!

Thank you Rich for photos and videos!

She looks really great!
And I like Norwegian tiller also.

Looks like the compliments I wrote before disappeared. The boat looks just so great. I like the photo through the tops of the waterside plants.

One thing I noted is the sails, particularly the mainsail. The mainsail looks very far back compared to the mast. It might be the angle, but check the drawings of the boat in the plans and move things around until you get something similar. The halyard position on the yard should be pretty close to halfway along that edge of the sail.

Then alter the downhaul to get the sail and boom at the right angle and overlap compared to the mast as in the drawings.

The reason for this is that the downhaul is more effective in controlling twist if it is in the standard position rather than too far forward.

Sometimes you see lug rigs with only a downhaul and that downhaul very near the tack (forward front corner of the sail) and lots of twist which upsets handling and speed. The history of dinghy performance is very close to how much control is had over twist.

The Balance Lug will never match a modern tweaked dinghy rig for twist control, but it has some, particularly if you use the properly placed downhaul with strong tension when the wind is moderate and then crazy tension when the boat becomes overpowered.

Which is why the balance lug was the fastest dinghy sail on the block up till the early 1900s when there started to be more consistent and serious development in the bermudan rig - alllied with the marketing pitch that "the sail performance is seriously degraded because of the spar pressing against the sail on one tack"

Which we know from experience is so much bunkum.

Looking forward to more sailing stories ... with a weeee bit more wind!

MIK

Took her out again on Saturday. Not much more wind, but had a couple of good puffs. The push-pull tiller works very well in light wind. I use a bungee cord to hold it to the coaming, and can just lie down on the floor and she steers herself. Need more wind to see if it works in that situation. It has freed up a good amount of room in the cockpit too. She gets a lot of looks at the boat ramp and it takes me a fair while to pack her up because of all the interest.
Otherwise, the double lug rig is very simple. I adjusted the sail and halayard position this time, hope it looks a bit better from a lug rig perspective.
RichPicture2.jpg

I have to wonder, what is the point of the mizzen, really? I know it's traditional, but for a performance daysailer it seems redundant.

Originally Posted by Sumbloak

I have to wonder, what is the point of the mizzen, really? I know it's traditional, but for a performance daysailer it seems redundant.

Beth, in addition to the performance, yet have the character and beauty!

She is beautiful - primarily.
Someone, who does not see it, he must look for another boat.

Originally Posted by Sumbloak

Aha. Of course. He curved it to get it around the mizzen. D'oh.

Look there:

Originally Posted by Sumbloak

I have to wonder, what is the point of the mizzen, really? I know it's traditional, but for a performance daysailer it seems redundant.

WAAAAAAH ... just lost a long reply

WAAAAAAH2 - now it lost my paragraphs????

For performance a single sail is best - if there is not too large a restriction on rig height - the latter is my observation. For example the Goat.

I would agree with you for course racing. But as soon as you expand from that the mizzen has advantages.

First advantage is you can stop the boat and it is totally relaxed. The main functional reasons are to reef or fix something or bail out after capsize. Very often you see references to the mizzen being pulled in flat to point her head to wind. That's wrong advice - the boat sails backwards and hunts from tack to tack. But a little loose and the boat will drift sideways slowly. Nice too that you can tighten it to go more backwards or loosen it to go more sideways or more for sideways and forwardish. Great if you are reefing in a channel with the wind at some oblique angle. John Goodman and I did that in the channel during the Texas200 - and had control to keep over to the side when the barge trains came through. It would be powerless panic otherwise.

Reason 2 Handicapping committees for mixed fleet sailing
That divided rig boat can't go to windward
Oh ... and they are lugsails.
and you can still give the club level lasers a run for their money. (one time at the little Clayton bay club in South Australia the finishing boat crew gave me a discretionary trophy for finishing first and second in the two races of their big mixed fleet series. From Dinghies to Yachts. They know the boat so I was handicapped out ... but when I walked up a heckler yelled out "what the f... is that thing". I think he meant the boat, rather than the skipper who looks somewhat average.

You can sail backwards under much more control. Pull the mizzen round to the side you want to steer away from and steer with the rudder at the same time. Good for going into a Lock on a weir (Goolwa South Australia) or into a marina which is dead downwind in a good breeze. You have about 15 to 20 degrees each side of dead downwind.

Some chance of the 32" wide boat sitting at anchor with foils retracted.

Stop to take photos or videos, have a rest, sort something out or eat lunch - make sandwiches in a 32" wide boat!

Handling a squall - again in a 32" wide boat. I've had her planing properly under mizzen only - just before I changed to bare poles (and jumped up onto the plane once after that too).

The jib is well accepted as a second sail but it is much more problematic (and powerful upwind and useless down - the mizzen is opposite). I like racing efficient boats with short footed jibs very much but I'm very aware of the poor life of the sail, the amount of messing around you have to do to make it efficient - tracks, barber haulers, stays with appropriate tension then the extra labour of sailing - keeping sheets from tangling during prestart flogging, bad behavour after capsize, trying to stop the sheets catching on something, uncertaintly that the jib is setting right - even with well set up boats. With a boomed mizzen you can just concentrate on sailing - it is easier to set up.

I know from quoting on sail/rig packages that a sloop is way more expensive than a freestanding main and mizzen.So that is some.

And as Robert says ... it looks so interesting on the beach.

I love the iconoclastic reason too. People just don't expect it to perform at all. Brings a grin to my face every time. Because people have it all wrong about where performance comes from. That was my hunch proved out by BETH and the Goat. I've the known that rig efficiency is largely a control of twist.

Foil efficiency means you can ignore hull efficiency unless you do something really stupid. The PDRacers and OzRacers taught me that ... they are iconoclastic too. Very Very Experienced sailors find that the boat behaves like a modern boat and can climb upwind better than many bigger boats despite the polytarp sails.

Or Composites for weight - the near 16ft Goat Island Skiff of 6mm plywood and Paulownia trim - 105lbs (50kg) for $2500 to $3500. Go sailing with the family or have the local handicapper tearing out their hair. Much of the "development" in the last 30 years has been a gradual transfer of well understood general principles that can be applied to boats of any material to using highly expensive materials that have given us another few percentage points of performance compared to the tens of tens of percent from good foils or controlling twist or keeping weight down with intelligent structures.

Prejudice - literally pre judgement - is what passes for speed producing factors. Reverse bows will be soooo "Remember the boats around 2010 ..." in another ten years. Genoas were taken to be Fast for decades. Asymmetric spinnakers look great but on restricted waters that many sail on are useless against conventional kites - particularly as you move away from lightweight skiffs into trailer sailor and yacht sizes.

Fashion Fashion

But the things that make boats really perform are applicable to any boat regardless of its material and the joy of handling a light efficient boat does not necessitate anything expensive happen at all

MIK

Goodness Mik I love your way of thinking!

Fair enough. I've always found that for general daysailing, only having one sail to handle makes things a lot easier for a singlehander. Then again, I wasn't heaving to or anything like that.

Yep ... you just made me identify ... it can be a good way to extend the usefulness of a daysailer - and thus its marketability.

The rest of the stuff was a storer rant - not directed at your question at all.

Super observation and question!

MIK

Originally Posted by Sumbloak

Fair enough. I've always found that for general daysailing, only having one sail to handle makes things a lot easier for a singlehander. Then again, I wasn't heaving to or anything like that.

That's exactly what I thought when I drew up the goat. I was thinking in terms of a DIY NS14 with all the complication and expense pulled out. It's nice the sailing characteristics are not too far different.

The NS14 has 100 sq ft (9.1 sq m or is it 9.3?) of real sail area. Which is why the Goat has 105 - that was a partially compensation for the lesser control of twist of the balance lug compared to the 16:1 vang on the Northie. We are making inroads on the twist I think with the bleeter and vanghaul.

Also one sail is cheaper in both the sail and the gear required.

Rigging time becomes tiny for the Goat as opposed to small for Beth.

Less building time.

Those were my considerations for the Goat rig. I did see it as a daysailer compared to the notional campcruiser of the BETH sailing canoe.

MIK