Thread: GIS Build in Queenstown New Zealand

Congratulations, Ian! Your Goat looks great!

Woo hoo! Another Goat gets wet! Congrats on your launch. I look forward to more reports!

Hi Ian,

So exciting to have a Goat in NZ! It really has a lot on NZ heritage. If John Spencer had not been ... then my sailing life would have been very different and the boats I design would be different too
http://www.firebug.co.nz/images/acro...s_obituary.pdf

That is of course assuming that if you have a Spencerless parallel universe whether I would have gotten interested in sailing light simple boats at all. There would have been none in my neck of the woods!

It will go the nicest if you spend more time sitting close to your wife in the middle of the boat!

Lovely looking boat, well done on your build )

Boat looks great! I am sure you will enjoy her tremendously.

Looking foward to reading about the mods you made, especially concerning the mast(s) and drainage tubes out of the back of the boat.

Yes .. this is the drainage tube boat. Look forward to testing with an onshore wind!

Thanks for all the comments everyone. I'll comment on some of the variations I've made, including the carbon spars and drainage tubes/central buoyancy compartments. I haven't had the chance to do a capsize test yet, but I'll try to do so before the summer is out.

Today is sunny with a light breeze so we're off for a sail on the lake

Ian

Originally Posted by Boatmik

It will go the nicest if you spend more time sitting close to your wife in the middle of the boat!

Hehe, that rear buoyancy tank should never have been called a "seat"

Yep, waiting for all the reports on those spars, including the boom, especially. Need a nice fresh breeze to test them though.

My son is the only one I have seen use the "rear seat" for a long period of time. He sat back there for a couple of days steering the boat. If you weigh less than 100lbs and can fit under the tiller it's a great place. (I don't fit by the way.)

Originally Posted by woodeneye

Hehe, that rear buoyancy tank should never have been called a "seat"

Originally Posted by woodeneye

Hehe, that rear buoyancy tank should never have been called a "seat"

Yep, waiting for all the reports on those spars, including the boom, especially. Need a nice fresh breeze to test them though.

My fault. But I was thinking of rowing and motoring

hehe

Originally Posted by keyhavenpotter

Congratulations on the big day. She looks great, rig looks great. What a memorable day for your family and especially your daughter catching such a huge fish.

Brian

Hi Brian, thanks for the comments, and for all the advice at the time I was sorting out the carbon spars and seeing the sail was cut to suit them. It all seems to have come together well. I've had the kids in the boat every time so far, so priority hasn't been on careful observation and tuning of sail shape, but a few quick changes after the first time out and it seems acceptable for now.

Yes, a memorable day for the kids with that fish, it could have been even more memorable, this was going on around the the next headland. I'm hoping to get down to a different area further east before the summer is out, I know a couple of bays where we can consistently see dolphins feed in close to shore. Hopefully the orcas don't turn up and start chomping there way through a pod of dolphins while the kids are watching!

Interesting the conversations at the boat ramp getting on the water - the recreational fishermen with their alu power boats Attachment 193649looking at us quite dubiously going out without a big motor on the back, but a couple of retired third generation commercial fishermen came down to look and commented favorably on how we had the boat set up with sail and oars and three reefs ready to go. One of them showed me a clinker dinghy his grandfather had built that he was thinking of restoring.

My family history on this coast goes back a bit, my great grandmother was shipwrecked with her four children east of here on New Years Eve - New Years Day 1873 - 1874. My great grandfather, then aged 11, was the oldest of the children. 100 days after leaving Gravesend in the Surat, they were huddling round a campfire on a remote beach in half a set of wet clothes.

Ian

Orcas don't eat Goats, do they?

Looks like you're having a great time with your labor of love. Does she have a name?

Originally Posted by davlafont

Orcas don't eat Goats, do they?

Looks like you're having a great time with your labor of love. Does she have a name?

She will, I just have to get around to painting it on the transom.

Ian

Some thoughts on some of the variations I've made:

Carbon Spars
I'm happy I went that way for a few reasons:

It keeps the all up weight under what I can manage on my own on and off the trailer and up and down a boat ramp or beach. I have a set of wheels/basic beach trolley that fits under the boat and can stay attached when it's on the trailer, so I can park above the beach or boat ramp, lift the back of the boat off the trailer and put it down on the wheels, then pick up the front and wheel it down to the water. My trailer is the old box trailer I use for firewood that I extended the bar on, and our car is a 2 litre front wheel drive I'm not keen on taking down a boat ramp or beach, so I need to keep overall weight below what I can handle on a trolley on my own. I got the boat in and out of the water down a steepish gravelly beach on my own the other day with the trolley wheels, I don't think there is another design big enough for the family on the water where this would be remotely possible. Spars, including the oars are quite a high proportion of the weight of the GIS, so I also tried to keep my oars as light as possible to keep overall weight down. I have some lightweight fibreglass oar shafts I can make an even lighter set with in the coming winter. I figure I save a lot if I don't need to get an expensive dedicated boat trailer or a bigger 4WD vehicle, and can keep the car as far away from the salt water as possible.

Ability to set and strike the whole rig out on the water.
I found I could step the mast and strike it while out on the water with the kids on board, I'm not sure I'd be keen if the mat weighed 10 kg. Some of the places I'd be keen to launch would involve rowing out through a small surf, putting up and striking the rig beyond the break was a capability I was keen to have.

Increased stability.
The boat felt more 'solid' and stable on the water than it had a right to, considering it's size and light weight. I don't have a direct comparison, but it felt comfortable with kids on board in gusty conditions when I had the first reef tied in. A gust would hit and the boat would heel, I'd be hiking and easing the sheet, but there was plenty of time to do so, and no feeling that the rig was starting to take over as the gunwale got close to the water.
It would be interesting to do proper stability calculations, but my rough estimate is as follows: If the CG of the boat plus rig is about 10 cm below the gunwales, and the CG of the weight that is removed is 2 m above the overall CG of the boat plus rig, then taking that 8 or so kg away from the rig benefits stability about as much as adding 40 - 50 kg of ballast to the bottom of the boat, which is quite a significant increase in stability.

Lastly, and by no means least, I spent a lot of money on them, so I of course have a high stake in justifying that decision to myself!

Spars and sail together:

My yard is a little more than twice as stiff as most of the wooden yards we have data for, my sail was cut taking this into account. As I said, observing and manipulating sail shape hasn't been the priority so far, I've still got plenty to fiddle with, but they seem to work together well enough, I can see/feel the yard bending with downhaul tension. Interestingly, the boat has a small amount of lee helm with the centreboard in the standard position, exactly as Woodeneye reported. (I think I had the fore and aft trim more reasonably centred when I was feeling this) Fortunately, I heard from Woodeneye and his observations of moving to a much stiffer yard at just the right moment when I was about to make my centreboard case. I left the position of the bottom of the slot standard, but made the centreboard case 60 mm longer at the front, and extended the top of the slot 60 mm both fore and aft to give me more ability to alter the angle of the centreboard to get things balanced. When I set the centreboard as vertical as possible, and had the luff 300 mm in front of the the mast, I had the correct, slight amount of weather helm.

Thinking about this more, and looking at the sail as I pulled on the downhaul, I think the combination of loose footed boom and stiffer yard that Woodeneye and I have means most of the tension remains directly along the luff as you crank on the downhaul, and this keeps the draft and centre of pressure forward. With more flexible spars, and especially with the sail laced to the boom, more of the downhaul tension will start to appear further aft, in a straight line between the downhaul and the halyard attachment point, and the maximum draft will be further aft. I'll try and draw a picture, I'm curious what others think of this.
Attachment 193847
It's good news for me, the slight lee helm with the centreboard in the middle of it's range means I should be able to get a nice balance once the mizzen is in place by only angling the centreboard back a bit more, and I won't have to go to a second forward mast step for the main mast.

Other modifications:
My middle seat is twice as wide as standard (so I can sit next to my wife in the middle of the boat, Mik!) , and boxed in for extra buoyancy. I'm happy with the wide seat, I had three adults and a couple of kids sitting on it, it keeps them all where they should be for boat trim. It should help a lot with capsize recovery, though I haven't tried that yet. There's a lot of dry storage space in there, but I have to complete the seals around the edges of the hatches and sort out the bungees keeping them closed, those middle seat hatches are sealed with duct tape at the moment.

The drainage tubes let in water when I sit on the rear buoyancy tank (to put the rudder down the rest of the way only!) I taped them up, I'll have to see if they drain water out or in when I do a capsize test before I decide if they're a good thing or not. If they don't work, they'll still need some kind of closure that can be opened when necessary.

Thats all for now, I've got some family things to sort in Wellington next week, and my wife has stuck a big list of things that I promised to get on to 'once the boat is finished', it includes painting the house, and getting the boat out of the garage/tidying it up so the car can go back in after a year outside. I also have to return the buggy wheels I pinched for the beach trolley to the 1 1/2 year old's buggy! Hopefully I'll still be able to get some significant time on the water before the summer is over.

Ian