Rudder Update (belated)

I'm sorry it has been so long since I've written. I made some HUGE progress on the boat, and even took it out, a couple of months ago. But immediately thereafter we went to Colorado, and then I got back and almost moved to Scotland, and then the opera season started and I just haven't had two minutes to type.

I think the last I posted (in JUNE!) was the sail mockup, with the crossbrace for the mast held on by clamps, and the canvas loosely draped over the spar to give some idea of how it might work.

The following weekend (the July 4 weekend), I bit the bullet and permanently added the mast brace and secured the step of the mast onto the bottom of the boat, using the very last of my fiberglass epoxy.

You'll notice that I also added some half-decking, for and aft, to close the bow and stern of the boat. There was no practical reason to do this (and I've lately found a pretty good reason to have not done this, so those will likely disappear.)

Once I got the mast step locked into place and capable of sustaining load, it was time to rig the sail. For Reals, as the mariners say.

I lashed the sail tightly to the spar with short lengths of cordage.Red arrows indicate the lashing of sail to spar

Having done that, it was merely a matter of laying along the running rigging and hoisting the sail. As you may recall, I spent some time thinking about this in advance, and came up with this plan:
It was merely a matter of putting those plans to practice.

And, voila!:

Here is the halyard, highlighted in blue, to match the drawing:
The idea was to simply pull on the halyards, and up would rise the sail to its yard.
And, you know what?

IT WORKED!
It ultimately takes three sets of ropes to work the sail: The first are the halyards for dropping the sail from the spar (explained and highlighted in blue, above.)

There is also the main halyard to raise the spar itself (and battened sail) from the base of the mast to the top of the mast, highlighted below in red. It is secured to the spar (horizontal pole), run through the center block (pulley) at the top of the mast, and then straight down to the crossbrace and lashed (tied off) at the base when the sail is raised. If you untie this and let it go, the entire sail, spar and all, will drop to the deck.
And finally, there are the sheets, which run from the clews (bottom outer corners of the sail) back to the stern of the vessel (what I will somewhat indulgently call the quarter deck), highlighted below in yellow:
When the sail is lowered and drawing, I simply need pull (or let fly) one or both of those to change the direction and tautness of the sail.

Of course, I have yet to try this in practice. I did take the Ruddy Duck out subsequent to assembling this mast rig, but I had both boys and left the mast at home. So it has yet to be sea tested.

You can see from this illustration, though, that, with everything rigged properly and a breeze from abaft the beam, it should work well.
I am pleased.

Sail Mockup

I fiddled around with things a little more last night. Again, none of this work is set is stone, but I did want to get a sense of scale, practicalities, et cetera, before doing this thing for real.

When I rigged the mast the day before, it seemed to me that the 6' horizontal yard was disproportionally short. So I decided to try an 8' horizontal, and it seems to be a little better ratio, height-to-width.

Just for ducks, I decided to loosely tie on the sail (a duck canvas tarp) to the yard before raising it, to just get an early sense of what we'd be looking at:

Obviously, things are not rigged properly, but it's enough to get a sense of things.

One thing I noticed is that this sail, even without being properly rigged, and without sheets to hold it taut against the wind, provides a very large surface area (48 square feet) that can catch the lightest breeze. I don't have the mast "stepped" into the deck, it's really just gravity and friction against the bottom of the boat that's holding this rig up. It was a very calm night last night, but one little gentle breeze came through the back yard (barely enough to ruffle leaves on the trees) and it blew the whole sail/mast rig over. I think when I get it rigged taut, with the thwart and the step set into the deck, it's going to be able to provide some pretty good thrust.

This mock-up also affirmed an issue that Mary originally raised a couple of weeks ago, when I was last musing about sail plans: I'm not going to be able to see where I am going.

I laughed her off at the time, but I'm starting to wonder if she might not have a point. Clearly, I'm going to have to periodically raise the sail (or part of the sail) to be able to see ahead. I'm also toying with the idea of moving the sail thwart back further towards the second rib, and putting Midshipman Henry in front of the mast to act as lookout.

Because I'm feeling like sharing, I'll let you in on my idea for the sail rigging, which is based on traditional methods, but with a slight modification.

In a traditional square rig (as I understand it), the sail is tied to the yard across the top, and then there are furling lines which run from the top of the mast to the bottom corners.So, when you pull down on these lines (1), the corners "furl" up diagonally towards the top center of the mast(2).
My idea, which I got while looking at our Roman shades in the office, is to have a second pair of blocks out at the ends of the yard, so that when the sheets are hoisted (1), the corner of the sail will raise straight up to the yard(2).
This way, I could pull on one or both of the lines, and get the sail to many different shapes and sizes, relatively easy. And, when I don't want the sail at all, I can pull them both all the way to 100%, hoisting the sail up to the yard and out of the way.

Anyway, that's the plan. The next step (possibly tonight) is to epoxy the inside of the boat and the spars (mast and yard), and then I'll be ready to rig the sail on Friday.

Mast Mockup

I went home last night and it was such a beautiful evening that I decided to work on the boat for a little bit. But when I went to get it to bring around to the back yard, I realized that I hadn't mowed the lawn this past weekend because of all of the rain, and, as I always tell the kids, you have to do your chores before you can have fun, so I got out the lawn mower instead.

I started mowing the side yard, when Charlie came up and asked if he could mow the lawn. (Mind you, this is no altruism on his part: it's pure calculated mercenary-ness. He didn't ask to be paid, but he rolled the dice, figuring that if he volunteered and did a great job, there might be some cash for him in the end. And I have to say, he did a really good job. And so there well may be some cash (or prizes) for him in the end. (There's a new gameboy game that he wants, and we'll probably go get it for him this weekend in preparation for the drive to Colorado next week.))

In any event, with my evening freed up from lawn mowing, I was able to re-devote the time to mast stepping.

As foretold, I put the boat on the grass, and clamped in the mast thwart in a couple of different places to see what looked right. (A "thwart" is a horizontal brace in a boat - imagine a canoe seat: a board running across the width of the canoe for the paddler to sit on. A mast thwart is a canoe seat with a hole in it for the mast to go through.)

I tried it all the way up front at the first rib:
Note: to secure the mast in place (when I decide where it's to go), I'm going to attach a mast seat to the deck (floor) of the boat, and also rings around the hole cut in the thwart. For these, I'm going to use closet curtain-rod brackets:
The installed mast looked so good, I decided to mock up the block system and the yard for the sail.

I drilled a hole through the top of the mast, to which I could attach a line onto which the blocks (remember, this is nauticalese for "pulley") could be attached. My plan calls for three masttop blocks: one for the halyard (the rope used to raise the yard (pole) onto which the sail is attached), and two for the sheets (the ropes that actually control the height of the sail itself.) The halyard will use the middle of the three blocks:Note, this is not the final fine work, but it's just roughed out to give a sense.
I then tied the yard to the halyard, and raised it:Viola [sic]. A basic square rig.

I must admit, I was pleased.

Then I used my "eye", and it seemed like that might be a little far forward. With a wind pressing on the sail, it might serve to drive the nose of the boat down into the water and slow it down. So I moved it back to the second rib:

This looks more balanced to me, but I wonder about space for the whole crew with the mast stepped this far back.

So, I split the difference and put it between the two ribs:
To my eye, this looks like about the correct position. I need to figure out exactly how I'm going to affix the thwart to the pirogue. I'm thinking I'll attach short sections of the rub rail oak to the inside of the gunwales, and then screw the thwart onto those. Conceivably, therefore, I could rig the mast and take it out for trials and if it's badly placed, I can just move the thwart brackets forward or back as the need dictates.

We'll see. It's a long way from finished, but it's gratifying to see that the rough ideas I've been sketching in my notebook seem to have some validity.Left, preliminary drawing of the three-block rig.
On the right, a subsequent drawing, with halyard in red and sheets in blue for clarification in my head.
Fred, any thoughts?

The Beginning of the End

The Rudder (alternate nickname for "Ruddy Duck") is far from a completed vessel, but I can begin to see the end in sight.

I have a three-day weekend this weekend, and it's supposed to be absolutely beautiful. While I was at the hardware store yesterday, I decided to pick up a few supplies with which I think I can fashion a rudimentary sail rig. I got an 8' closet pole (mast), a 6' closet pole (yard), 100' of stout cotton rope (halyard and sheets), a 6'x8' canvas tarp (main course, or sail) and a handful of blocks (that's sailor-talk for "pulley".)

I think on Friday I'll do the final layer of epoxy on the inside of the boat, and I'll also give the two poles a coating of epoxy to strengthen them and make them water-tight. Then Saturday, I'll just go ahead and rig the sail. My plan is to just put the boat on the ground in the back yard, get in it (with one or both boys), and determine where the logical place to put the mast, and make it so.

(If you'll recall, there was an earlier step in which my "eye" was supposed to tell me when something (the placement of the ribs) looked "right". Well, likewise the placement of the mast. At least, I'm hopeful.)

After I get the clean coat of epoxy in the inside, I'm going to paint the inside, I think, to give it a cleaner look. It's getting there.

What's Next?

There's been some rumbling and grumbling from the masses about my lack of new posts in this log.

In my defense (me? Defensive? Never!), there has been little or nothing to report. Both boys had baseball this past weekend - Charlie at 1:00 on Saturday and Henry at 12:30 on Sunday - so the middle of both days was completely taken up with baseball. Check that: Charlie's game was rained out, but that same rain prevented me from pulling the Duck out to continue working. Sunday was beautiful for Henry's game, but showers came in in the afternoon, scuttling my half-hearted attempt to continue progress.

It's a beautiful day out today, but rain is due to roll in tomorrow, and the weekend looks iffy at best. When I can next get out, here's the plan:

I had had some problem with the last layer of epoxy I had used to line the inside seams never drying. I'm going to have to get in there and get out as much of that as I can, sand things smooth and try to re-coat the whole interior with a good coat.

Then I'm going to "deck" the first 30 inches or so on each end of the boat: I'll put in one cross-brace (using the leftover oak from the rubrails) and then cover it with a piece of either the scrap 1/4" maple ply or maybe the oak beadboard I got and never used for the faux clinker. It's just getting in the way, a big 4x8 sheet.

I also need to figure out how I'm going to manage the sail rig.
As I may have mentioned, Fred got me the beautiful book , which I have been poring over.

It's an interesting prospect, adding a sail to a vessel not originally designed to use one. This book has entire sections, very scientifically explaining how to calculate the center of effort of various differently-shaped sails, but then passages expounding on how there is no final set way to do things, you have to just kind of get a feel for it.

Most of the book (in fact, most everything I can find about adding sail to canoe) is lateen- or lugsail-oriented. (A refresher on different sail types, if you're interested in following along at home, is here.)

While I defintely see the merits of a fore-and-aft sail (briefly, a triangular sail, like you typically see on small sailboats, which can take a sideways-bearing wind and use it to push you forward), I am more and more drawn to a square sail (simply, a big square (or rectangular) bed sheet which is hung from a "curtain rod" positioned across the ship, to catch the wind blowing from behind; picture a Viking ship.)

Actually, that is the best way to envision the difference between the two basic sail plans: sailboat versus Viking ship.
Fore-and-aft rig.
(Note: this is a "Sunflower" sailboat, the type of boat I first learned to sail, 30 years ago at Washington Park in Denver.)

Square rig
Clearly, much more majestic
While fore-and-aft, as I said, has many, many things going for it (among other things, you can sail at times and in directions other than when the wind is directly behind you, and blowing in the direction you want to sail), it also has some inconveniences (the sail, being blown on from the side, will tend to want to flip your boat over, unless you have a large keel down in the water to prevent such things. Note: my boat does not have a large keel down in the water to prevent such things.)

But, mostly, I want a square sail because nobody else has a square sail.

Its very . . . it-ness, its being will make it, and therefore me, unique.

I'm excited about this now. I have to say (as I have in the last two posts), the launch was so dissatisfactory and anticlimactic that I had lost all of my mojo for The Boat Project, and this had me quite discouraged.

But all of this musing on the sail plan has my juices flowing again. There is some clean-up work that I'm not looking forward to, but I'm excited about moving forward with the sail rig. Hopefully Sunday will be sunny.

Me = Recalcitrant

I haven't gotten much done on the boat lately.
I was very excited about the potential sailing rigs after my last post, but significantly less so today.
I got a very thoughtful e-mail from Fred about the various potentialities of sailing rigs, which I will quote in part:

One of the more compelling aspects of any sailing rig is its structural and organizational flexibility. A limited set of basic components can afford the ability to adapt to all the compounding variables of load and trim and wind and water. For your boat, without the benefit of a time-tested specific sail plan, any design will be inherently speculative and prototypical; it would not suit to impose a rigid system.

Eminently logical, no doubt. And it matches this article I found about setting up a sailing canoe rig in many important points.

I will post the proposed plan from Fred here, if only to have it in the log. Once again, if you are not up to speed with your Chapman Piloting and Seamanship, you may want to skip down a bit.

So if I could presume to suggest the outline of a plan........

It appears in the official, idealized catalog photo of your canoe that there are occasional clearances between the ribs and the bottom. It was not clear in your photo of your dry fit mock-up if this wold be the case with your boat. If not, some sort of similar feature would be exceedingly useful--it could be as simple as an evenly spaced(6-8" apart) series of 3/8" holes through the ribs.

Beyond that, you would need a few spars of different lengths for the parts. It could all be of similar stock, say 2"x 2" or thereabouts, squarish rather than rectangular. And you would need a fair amount of 1/4" line, decent double-braided-type marine stuff, good for knot-tying.

The mast foot: This would be a length of wood long enough to comfortably span two of the ribs, nominally along the centerline of the bottom. It would have a few holes drilled through--evenly spaced every 3-4", a foot or so to either side of the centerpoint, big enough(thus slightly oversized) to accommodate a 1/2" bolt. The mast foot would be set across two of the ribs--on the centerline, offset, or diagonal--and lashed down. The lashing and the holes would allow positioning adjustability fore and aft, as well as side to side, if desired, for the location of the mast.

The mast: A spar of maybe 10'--these specifics are where your sea trials will become telling. If it starts long and proves awkward, you can always cut it shorter. This spar would have at each end a hole the same size as the hole in the mast foot, with the exact placement allowing an end to bolt to the mast foot without the mast itself touching the bottom of the boat. (The other hole will serve as a point for tying on the sheave for raising the yard.) The bolt could be a nice stainless steel or brass hex head, washered on both sides, and hand-tightened with a wingnut. This will secure the mast to the foot, and still allow it to pivot, perhaps useful for stepping and striking and trimming. I would envision stepping the mast by resting it across the bow and aligning the bolt holes, and then swinging the mast up(or, in reverse, striking it down to the deck, as it were) into its desired trim.

The gunwale brace: A spar as long as the beam width of the canoe, plus several inches. This would be set across the gunwales, positioned as needed--square to the centerline or not--and lashed down. The mast, swung up, would then lash to it. The extra outboard length might eventually come in handy for stays and fairleads, or even a daggerboard point. At this point, too, you might find that a backstay will answer--a simple line from that hole at the top of the mast to somewhere stern-ish, rib 'C' maybe, or another gunwale brace(it would just be another uncarpentered stick after all) forward of the steersman.

The yard: A stick of the same stuff, 8'to 10'? with a simple bridle tied to a line passed through the mast sheave. Hoist. Tie off to the gunwale brace.

The sail: I'm serious here--a shower curtain. I think the size(tub-style) and material(lightweight, moderately impermeable) would be about right, it would be inexpensive, it would expendable, and it would be reinforced and grommetted along its top edge and ready to be tied onto the yard. You would only need to add grommet points to the corners that would become the clews. If it were too big, length or width, you could simply cut off what you didn't like; too small, tie on another one, overlapping to suit. The sheets, secured at the clews, would pass outboard under the gunwale brace to the stern.

The article I referenced above about setting up a canoe for sailing stresses many of the same points:

The placement of you and your sail rig in the canoe is part science and part of the art of sailing well. In order to sail safely and under control, it is essential to obey the physical laws of balance. . . The mast step should be placed in relation to the location of the leeboard thwart and vice-versa for a balanced rig. It is recommended that you start by using secure clamps to attach the leeboard thwart to the gunwales so that you can make adjustments.

I would like to state for the record that I do not like these answers.

Fred puts it best:

I don't know if this is a definitive design, but I hope that its essence is relative simplicity and flexibility. Ideally it might provide the capacity to allow you to complete your boat without building yourself into a corner, so to speak. If you were, for example, to forgo your sailing ambitions, you would only be left with four unused sticks and some rope(and a shower curtain), rather than an integral structural modification.

I want to build in my mast step. I want it to be part of the boat. It is less important to me that it works properly than that it looks good. I have already mentally designed the mast step, and some parts of the rig itself. Will they "work" according to some arbitrary "laws of physics"? Answer: I don't care.

Is this smart of me?
No.
Do I care about that, either?
No. It's my boat. That's the best part of building a boat. It doesn't have to make sense to any of you.

I do, very much like this last bit from Fred:

Some questions:
Does any of this make sense?
Can you sew?
Do you have a small grommet kit?
Do you have a passing familiarity with certain knots--bowline, clove hitch, sheet bend, trucker's hitch, maybe a sheepshank, and various lashing methods? It is always good to remember that rope work, so fundamental to any mariner, can be aesthetically pleasing and deeply satisfying, as well as profoundly useful and effective.

In answer:
- Yes, it makes sense. (Even though I don't like it.)
- I can sew. Kind of. Not really.
- No, but I would like to have a small grommet kit.
- No, I no know knots. Although I truly want to. In all sincerity. That is something that I do want to come from this whole boat thing. I want to have nice ropes with intricate knots. I don't know any, but I will learn some.

Sailing Rigs

Actually, come to think of it, I do have something else boat-related on my mind.

NOTE: This is going to be a fairly lingo-heavy post about the specifics of various types of sailing rigs, so those of you of a less nautical bent might want to go ahead and look the other way on this one. I will try to add pictures to help to clarify.

As you may recall, I have been thinking much about making this at least a part-time sailing vessel. My original thought was to add a lateen sail, based upon an old black-and-white photo I had found, but Fred advised otherwise:

You might consider that your boat, and I say this with all respect, will probably never be much more than a before-the-wind sailer. Without entering into a detailed conversation about the dynamics of foils and pressure differentials, your boat seems suited for a simple square rig--mast and yard, sheeted from the clews--trimmed and steered with your paddle at the stern. The structure of the boat would support, in my opinion, an adequate mast--stepped at the bottom deck, with a simple brace from the gunwales, and perhaps a backstay.

I found this to be not only a very sensible idea, but it also appealed to me because of the prominence of the square rig in maritime history.

A quick example of the various sail rigs:This illustration is from the book Hand, Reef and Steer; A Practical Handbook on Sailing which I picked up at the library today, simply because of the title.

You may notice that for the "square rig" illustration (top), it depicts a Viking boat, complete with dragon figurehead. About it, the author (Richard Henderson) says:

The square rig is undoubtedly the oldest rig, having in all probability been used on the first sailboat. It reached its highest degree of development in the days of the clippership. This rig is most efficient when the wind is abaft the beam, or when a squarerigger has the wind behind her. The top of a squaresail is secured to a yard, which is a horizontal pole running athwartships that may be swung for and aft to a limited extent by lines called braces. Except for an occasional squaresail or a deep-sea boat expected to sail before the trade winds, or on a training ship, one seldom sees this kind of sail today. Squareriggers have been outmoded by the fore and aft rigged boat, which can sail much closer to the wind. Before they began to fade from existence, squareriggers reached a high degree of rig variation and complexity, but since they are almost a thing of the past, we will deal only with rig variations in the fore and aft class.

So . . . no help to me.

So, I did some more research, and found that there is very little information about single-mast, single-sail square rigs. I did find the Open Canoe Sailing Group, which has a small section on the rigging of a canoe for sailing, and since my pirogue will have much the same sailing properties as a canoe, I can use that as a reference.

But if I am going to add a sail to this boat, it will need a mast. And if it has a mast, it will need a mast step (a place to hold the mast) during construction, and if it's going to have a mast step during construction, I'll need to decide where to place it before construction.

And I don't know where to start. I was thinking of stepping the mast in the front third of the boat, but from the little I've been able to find on square rigs, the mainmast (or only mast) would be in the dead center of the boat. (A couple of the canoes on the OCSG have mid-hull masts.) What would happen if the mast moves forward? I'll be seated in in the stern of the boat, so that could offset the weight in front, and might keep the sail from pressing down the prow of the boat.

I also don't know how to actually rig the sail. I have found a simple line drawings of square sails, but no details about how the yard is affixed to the mast, or exactly how the braces are rigged . . .

I don't know that Fred will already know The Answer on this one, unless he has square-rigged a pirogue and loaded it with two boys. But I need to start somewhere, and all of my research has gotten me nowhere.

And his knowledge of the sailing properties of all of the various sail rigs, fluid mechanics, my pirogue, my building skills and the overall aesthetic of this project gives me complete confidence that he will come through.

Overactive imagination

I have ordered my fiberglassing supplies from Florida. There's a chance they'll be here by this weekend, and I can get a start on the butt joint.
But I think the main goals for this weekend will be assembling the ribs, for which I'll need some high-strength waterproof epoxy and some clamps.

I am determined to go V E R Y S L O W L Y on this project. I have a tendency to rush and get excited and do a sloppy job of things. I'm going to really move in slow motion so as to be as thoughtful as possible.

The reports I read about pirgoue building are very heavy on all glue-and-clamps and seem to disdain the use of screws or other fasteners. I thought at first that this might have something to do with water-tight-ed-ness, but if I'm glassing the entire exterior, does it matter that there are screws? I think not, and I think these are some sort of purists, who think that using fasteners is a sign of weakness.

For my part, I think nice a row of nice brass screws set at 8" intervals along the gunwales would have a striking appearance. Nautical, if you will. I don't think there are wood screws with rounded tops, but I will check.


I'm also considering making it sail-ready, although I don't plan to construct the sail rig in this initial build phase. But I am considering a half-deck in the front, with a mast step set in the floor. I was able to find this spectacular photograph of a sail canoe, which I intend to use as my model.

As you can see, it is rigged with a lateen sail, which maximizes the square footage and draw, while maintaining maneuverability. A main drawback I can foresee is that it seems designed to work on either the starboard or port tack (in the illustration above, the port only), but if you were to tack to starboard, the fore part of the sail would brail against the mast, restricting the draw. I suppose the way to get around this is to slue the entire boom around to put it on the opposite side of the mast. I think that could be very unstable, though, especially if there is any significant wind. Hm.

The other problem, of course, would be a flat-bottomed skiff would necessarily yaw to leeward without a keel and rudder to convert the force of the wind on the beam into forward momentum. Without a transom, a rudder is impractical, and a keel is likewise not in the plan. So this sail concept is not without obstacles.

I also don't know if a mast with a 3" step on the bottom deck of the boat and then about 3" of vertical bracing at the 10" deck level would be structurally sound. I might have to rig stays and perhaps shrouds, which could become cumbersome, and would prohibit the sluing of the boom as described above. Actually, looking again at the picture, I notice that boat has a forestay, which would prevent the rotating of the boom. Interesting.

Much later in the process, of course, one must consider final appearance (paint/stain) and, ultimately, a name for the vessel. My intention has been to have a natural wood finish, but Fred (somewhat facetiously) suggested the Nelson Chequer.


I could paint the gunwales black, and have black band at the bottom of the sides, and then the false gunports down the side. That could be greatly amusing to me.

As to the name . . . I think I have to know the boat first. Perhaps a name will just come to me, when I see her. Perhaps not. I have some ideas, but it's a bit premature.