The above is a pleasing companion to the photo I posted yesterday.
This morning I received an email from Jeff on SERENA, his Vagabond 42, which included:
Last night, I logged on to your site to catch up on the blog, and to my surprise found a picture of the two boats that arrived around sunset and anchored up directly behind my boat. My girlfriend, Allie, snapped the two pics I have attached. They departed at first light and I never had the opportunity to meet them.
In the foreground you have Curt’s Drascombe, in the distance, Steve Earley’s Welsford Pathfinder, SPARTINA.
Three boats anchor in a quiet cove near Oriental, North Carolina, and two of them make a connection the next day through this journal. A smile on an old sailor’s face.
Joy to all.
I have never sailed on a boat with a junk rig. I know sailors who have them and I am willing to learn. One is Graham, who has a junk rigged Top Hat 25 in Australia. I asked him about the rig and he sent me an informative reply that I believe will be interesting to others. I thank him for permission to share it.
My decision to fit junk rig to Arion in 2011 stemmed from two motives. One, I fell for Blondie Hasler's Jester way back in the late 60s, being attracted, in a typical adolescent way, to its unconventional wisdom, the whole low tech, low stress, build it from sticks and string philosophy. By the time I came to do it, I was beginning to find working on the foredeck difficult. My brain tumour affects my balance and stamina, and the idea of staying in the cockpit and reefing the sail just by easing the halyard and tightening up the sheet, plus running downwind just by easing the sheet and not needing to pole out headsails or fly a gennaker or Code Zero, held a lot of appeal. Blondie Hasler did not even go into the cockpit most of the time, but handled the sail from what he called a 'central control station', with just the upper torso out of the hatch, with the running rigging, plus windvane controls, coming to the hatch. Everybody has to go on deck occasionally to tend to gar but it is infrequent with a well-set up junk rig. Here is Blondie in Jester's central hatch:
Despite the myriad of lines evident, most are fixed, and there are only four per sail that are adjustable, the halyard, sheet, yard hauling parrel (snotter) and a luff hauling parrel that stops the luff from going forward when there is pressure on the sheet. Here is a basic drawing of it The yard hauling parrel, which holds the yard against the mast, is not shown.
All you do when you reef, is ease the halyard until the next batten up is just hanging free of the boom or any other battens already reefed. The sheet, yard hauling parrel and luff hauling parrel go slack when you do this, so you need to adjust them, then resume sailing. You do not have to tie the reefs in.
Performance is the question. There have been some major advances since Jester sailed in the 1960 OSTAR. The rig has always been brilliant downwind, it is like sailing under a squaresail, or a flat-cut spinnaker. You have all the power you need, except perhaps in light winds with a sloppy swell, when a large, feather-light spinnaker-type sail will be impossible to beat. It has to be said, even the most advanced junk rig will not have the light-weather performance of a bermudian rig with drifter or gennaker.
The areas of improvement have been to significantly increase sail area (makes sense since the rig is so easy to reef), and also the development of cambered junk sails. Some people have used hinged battens to get camber, but the most robust system is straight battens with each panel cut with its own camber, a bit like a bumblebee wing. Compare this photo of Jester and her modest, flat-cut junk sail at the start of the 1960 OSTAR (David Lewis andCardinal Vertue astern) with those of a Norwegian Folkboat, Ingeborg, that has a huge, cambered sail area.
And here is a photo of Mingming 11, the 24ft boat that Roger Taylor has been sailing in Arctic waters. His firstMingming had a standard-sized flat-cut sail, and he wanted better performance for the predominantly light Arctic summer winds, yet still be capable in a blow. He said Mingming 11 would sail in the lightest breaths, while the earlier boat would have been becalmed. His sail is a bit unusual in that the lower panels are separate and can be individually replaced. About 110% of the maximum fore and aft bermudian sail area is common, but up to 135% is possible if you are a competent sailor (I think you qualify).
Here's a picture of Arion going to windward, showing the straight battens and individually-cambered panels between them.
So it works, especially with plenty of sail area and some camber, but I suspect it might not satisfy your love of performance sailing. I am a slow coach. As long as I can keep off a lee shore and beat into and out of anchorages, I don't care if it takes a bit longer. The ease of handing the rig is the most important criterion for me.
And here is a link to Zane’s junk rigged Contessa 26, PANGO, with a cambered sail underway in New Zealand.
I heard from several of you about the numbers I provided yesterday about the pandemic. After reading ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider’ I became interested in comparing the rates of death and infection of the two pandemics. I offered and draw no conclusion from the numbers. I agree entirely with the comments made by a sailor/physician in the state of Washington.
I felt compelled to share some thoughts about COVID after reading your posts. I know you are not trying to minimize what is happening. I also believe that popular culture is being a bit sensational about what's going on.
Yes, by the time it is said and done COVID may not have killed the same percentage of the world's population as previous pandemics. And yes, most people that are infected will have a mild illness if they have any symptoms at all.
However I am troubled by the armed anti-lockdown protesters, by the incompetent presidential leadership, the "anti-maskers", and the politicization of the epidemic. These things I believe will ultimately cost more lives AND more economic suffering than we could have had if we had approached this problem in a coordinated, grown-up fashion. It is a false choice to think we must either save lives or save the economy. The economy will never recover until we have COVID under control and our healthcare system (for everyone, not just COVID patients) requires a functioning economy and some sort of GDP. In short, I don't think the lockdown orders were an over-reaction. We'll never be able to tell what would have happened if we had done nothing, but I'm glad we didn't risk it. Even if you assume that the true case fatality rate is "just" that of influenza (0.1%) you must then consider that this virus spreads more easily (due to asympotomatic spread and no vaccine yet), we could easily see millions of severe cases and hundreds of thousands of deaths in this country in pretty short order. The related concern is the real possibility of absolutely overwhelming our hospitals.
I'm a physician and I have cared for COVID and suspected COVID patients. My colleagues and I have not had adequate PPE and I am still re-using N95 masks (which was never intended by the manufacturer). We still have inadequate testing and contact tracing. Other hospitals in my region have drug shortages and not every patient can get Remdesivir. My hospital's beds and supply of ventilators were not exhausted, but during our peak we had two entire ICU floors full of COVID patients. If our state had not enacted stay at home guidelines I believe we would have exhausted our resources. If that had occurred then anyone that had any serious illness or terrible car accident may not have been able to have adequate care - so its not just about COVID patients.
Last evening I read an excellent and previously unknown to me poem, ‘Helen of Troy’, by Sara Teasdale, who was born in that city of three great poets, Saint Louis, Missouri. T.S. Eliot was also born there. Modesty forbids my naming the third.
Here is a link to ‘Helen of Troy’.
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