Apprentice Builder

We are especially pleased to be making the 80 sq ft balanced lugs’l for this John Welsford 11’ 6” Truant daysailer. Of course we’re always pleased to be making another small craft sail. There‘s nothing special in that, since we do it all the time. The sail is going to be in cream Dacron, vertical construction with narrow panels, external boltrope on head and luff, with a reef, and long sailbag for storing sail rolled on spars. Nothing special in that, either. What’s special is the wonderful blog the apprentice boatbuilder, Vanessa, is keeping. She and her father Jody are sharing work on this interesting construction project down in Tallahassee, Florida, and Vanessa has been chronicling their teamwork from the beginning. On her blog (http://vatalanta.blogspot.com/) you’ll see them behind planes, orbital and belt sanders, jig and Skill saws, using chisels, spreading epoxy, drawing patterns, feeding planks into a jointer/planer. Laudably, she and her father are always wearing appropriate safety equipment -- goggles, dust & vapor masks, hearing protection, rubber gloves, even hazmat suits. Vanessa’s blog makes very good reading. If you scroll far enough, you can find a photo of her without the battle gear.

Annual Report

We ended the year making sail number 1,083, yielding an average of 54 per year since we opened this loft in 1991. Our production of small craft sails has hovered around a sail a week for the last decade -- in 2011 we made 53. Nine were gaff, 7 lug, 6 sprit, 2 Gunter, 16 Bermudan mains or mizzens, and 13 were jibs (mostly set flying). Six of the Bermudan sails were for the popular Bufflehead cruising canoe. Six entailed traditional hand finish --rat-tailed faux hemp boltropes and hand-sewn eyelets. Besides the US, we dispatched sails to Canada, England, and Switzerland. Coming up in 2012 are sails for Iain Oughtred’s Tammie Norrie, Joel White’s Haven 12.5, a couple of custom lugs’ls & one for John Welsford’s Truant dinghy, a sprits’l for Doug Hylan’s Chesapeake Sailing Skiff, and 2 more of those Bufflehead sails for a client in the Netherlands.

UV-Resistant Bags

Dabbler Sails are always supplied with a bag. We used to make them out of nylon “bag cloth,” designed to hold sails during transportation and storage. They were NOT for protecting sails from the ultraviolet radiation in sunlight. Nylon bag cloth has two faults: It doesn’t breathe, and it’s not immune to UV degradation. Dabbler sails are now delivered with bags of a recently-developed lightweight version of the popular sun-resistant cloth Sunbrella. This breathable, UV-blocking fabric, called Acrylite, was designed as cover cloth for roller furling sails, but it makes great bags too. It isn’t available in a wide range of colors like Sunbrella, but it does come in our standard bag color -- forest green. Acrylite sailbags will protect sails stored in the sun, and help prevent mildew if sails happen to be stored wet or damp. (For off-season storage sails should be rinsed with fresh water, then thoroughly dried before being folded or rolled, bagged, and stored under cover.) Small-craft rigs often invite long bags - sausage bags. Very convenient for storing and carrying a lugs’l, sprits’l, or gaff sail rolled up on on the spar(s) it’s laced to. Especially appropriate for this full-batten standing lugs’l, the mizzen for a 24-ft yawl, rolled up on the yard with battens in place. The sprit-boomed, full-batten leg-o-mutton main would require a 15-ft long sausage bag, so the battens have to come out and it goes into a normal “stuff bag”.

Gunter Rig

Named after a 16th century English mathematician, Edmund Gunter. One of his inventions was the precursor of the slide rule – using a logarithmic scale. A form of this – called by seamen “the Gunter” -- was used aboard ships to solve navigation problems. The development of a small-boat sailing rig, incorporating a sliding yard to extend the luff, got dubbed the Gunter rig because of it’s similarity to the action of a slide rule. The Gunter’s virtue is that it results in an efficient triangular sail, whose spars will all stow in the boat. “Sliding Gunter” is the basic form, and originally involved two specially-forged fittings that slid on the mast, carrying the yard aloft. A patented lifeboat version allowed the butt of the yard to be fitted into the lower “Gunter Iron”, then pivoted up to be engaged by the upper iron, which was hauled aloft by a single halyard. Two recent commissions illustrate different offsprings of the original. The rig shown, an “Ellen” dinghy designed by John Brooks, is a variation on the sliding Gunter in which the yard is hoisted by a single halyard, the butt being controlled by a slide traveling on a sail track. The yard is vertical, and the luff is designed as for a Bermudan sail. Brooks shows a vertical reef with brails – for a normal reef, the yard would need a parrel ‘round the mast to control it when partially lowered. See below for another variation.

Quasi-Gunter Rig

One variation on the Gunter rig, sometimes called a Gunter lug, looks like a very high-peaked standing lug. The yard is carried aloft by a single halyard bent to it. The butt of the yard is kept to the mast by jaws or some similar device. Reefing requires a parrel to keep the yard against the mast when partially lowered. The yard does not stand quite parallel to the mast, as in a true Gunter. A variation even further from the true Gunter is shown in the illustration. The yard is fitted with a wire span (to facilitate reefing) and a halyard is attached with a span shackle. The lower end of the yard has jaws, and is fitted with another halyard -- there are thus both peak and throat halyards. The yard is far from parallel to the mast. The result is like a high peaked gaff sail. The sail has become quadrilateral. Nevertheless, the British designer of this 16-ft day boat calls her the Pearl Gunter Yawl. Alternate gaff and lug rigs are offered. The sailmaker designs this sail as though it were, in fact, a gaff sail. In all Gunter sails, the lower luff can be left to take care of itself, or fitted with grommets for lacing to the mast.

Herreshoff's Own

In 1889 Nathaniel G. Herreshoff (The Wizard of Bristol) launched a beautiful 16 1/2 foot daysailer he named Coquina. She was for his own use and pleasure, lightly built, with a versatile cat-ketch rig. Over the years various replicas have been built. Woodenboat Magazine revived interest in Coquina in issue No.187, 2005, and published building plans by Brooklin, ME designer/builder Doug Hylan. Our loft has made sails for several Coquinas -- and currently we have a suit on the loft floor for a Delta Air Lines pilot, whose Coquina is nearing completion in Marietta, GA. See below.

Quality Time

When not flying commercial jets, Mark Ritter has been spending quality time building this Herreshoff Coquina. Sails are to be 5 oz Challenge cream, with hemp-colored three-strand boltropes, rat tailed around the corners, and hand-sewn corner and reef rings. Long bags (lightweight forest green Sunbrella) will protect sails and spars when they are triced up against the masts. These will be sails 1,068 and 1,069. Other jobs on tap: Custom cat ketch rig for a Chuck Paine Bahama Sandpiper, three Bufflehead canoe sails destined for Switzerland, and a 115 sq ft lugsail for a 16-ft skiff.

Doin' Hoops

Periodically we have a job that calls for the full monte of custom touches. This gaff mainsail for a venerable Pete Culler Sloopboat (which lives on Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho) was ordered with Oceanus Ship’s Cloth, hand-sewn faux Manila boltrope, hand-sewn brass rings with liners, and mast hoops with bronze hoop connectors on the luff. The steam-bent straight-grain oak hoops, and the fancy investment cast connectors, come from Pert Lowell Co. up in Newbury, Massachusetts. Why connectors? Well, one half is seized to grommets in the luff, and the other half is screwed to the hoop. Bending the boltrope allows sliding the two halves together, or disconnecting them. Object? To leave the hoops on the mast, and take the sail ashore or stow it below-decks. The alternative is seizing the hoops directly to the sail, and cutting the seizings to remove the sail. Hoop connectors don’t solve all the issues connected with hoops -- you still have to remember to put them on the mast before it’s stepped!

Senior Project

Hadley, Massachusetts student Kyle Pratt decided to build a boat for his high school senior project. With encouragement from his father Dan, he got plans for a 12-ft Sandpiper dinghy from British designer Conrad Natzio. With a new language to digest -- “breasthooks“, “chines“, “snotters“, “beckets” -- it was a steep learning curve with considerable head scratching. But after three and a half months of after-school work, he had the boat nearly finished, and ready for show and tell in the Hartsbrook school auditorium. Father Dan reports the presentation was a success. “She was tipped out over the audience, which allowed the sails to “fill,” and backlit from the can lights above the stage. Very dramatic. It was the first time we had seen her with her sails on.” The sprit main and jib are 4.4 oz Contender tanbark cloth. Kyle hopes to use her as a beach cruiser, camping ashore on local rivers and lakes. (Our logos aren’t visible because, not wanting to be seen flying in the wrong direction, the duck never appears on the starboard side.)

Garage Boat

William Atkin designed this leeboard pocket cruiser half a century ago. Dave Zipoy, of Punta Gorda, Florida chose the design in part because at 18 ft, she’s the largest boat he can build in his garage. “I have lots of 18-ft boats,” he reports. With a loaded draft of only 1 ft 4.5 inches, she will also be able to venture into the interesting shallows of the Florida west coast. He doesn’t expect to complete her for another year or two, but when his wife offered by buy the sails as a Christmas present, he couldn’t refuse. Because the cabin is of the raised-deck design, making access to the foredeck an “up and over” exercise, Dave opted for a furling jib. Single-sheeting the jib to a turning block on the aft end of the stays’l club, then through a second block at the forward end of the spar, and back to the cockpit, will result in both self-tacking and furling, with all controls in the cockpit. We made the 131 sq ft gaff main and 44 sq ft jib with 6 oz Bainbridge Classic Cream, crosscut, 27” panels.