We had another sail today, in a very light wind.
Initially there
was no wind and we went out with no rigs. The new paddle worked well,
moving the boat at a pretty good speed, even with just one person
paddling. I'll have to make some more because I'd love to see how it
goes with four people paddling. We paddled and sculled across across the
lake and back (total about a mile and a half) pretty easily.
I
had made a 12 foot steering oar (it was originally 13 foot, but I had to
cut it down to fit in our van) with an asymetric blade, based on the
'AD scull' idea but largely guesswork because I couldn't much
information. My new rowlocks are apparently slightly different sizes,
because the oar was a nice snug fit in one, but too tight in the other
and wouldn't rotate, so I could only scull when the oar was on one side.
I found sculling to be quite natural and very quick to learn and about
as fast as paddling but with much better steering control. I tried
rigging up a line to hold the front of the oar down and sculling with
one hand on the line, but didn't find it useful. There wasn't much force
on it, and it didn't seem to help control the angle of the blade -
maybe there are subleties I've missed.
Later a light wind
arrived and we put up the sails, this time with kickers on both sails.
There was still a little weather helm, even with the fore sail over
sheeted and aft sail eased a little - however it was easily overcome
with the steering oar, or just by moving to the aft cockpit. Here are a
couple of short video clips, showing how the two sails push us along at
quite a reasonable speed in almost no wind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ALma58dqew
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRgtCrqZUpE
I've made a new, much stronger centreboard, but the old pivot bolt is too short so we were sailing without it today.
Finally,
here's a short clip of us playing with the new safety ama,
experimenting to see if we could use it to tack the boat. Tipping the
boat didn't really affect its course, and left me a bit trapped behind
the sail, so we won't be doing this regularly. It is however a good
demonstration of how gently it settles into the 'tipped' position, and
how much buoyancy there is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqlkUDq1a9U
We also checked that we can both stand on it without sinking it.
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