Pelican Launch

We recently delivered sails for this San Francisco Pelican to the builder, Windwalker Boats in Kansas. Windwalker’s customer had specified cream cloth, hemp-colored boltrope, and a tanbark pelican logo, cut out of tanbark cloth with the heat knife and machine sewn on. During preliminary discussions of other details, several pernickety questions from the customer hinted at an imperfect trust in our loft’s ability to make the sails of his dreams. In consequence of which we tried to very extra carefully hew to the line. After launch day the word came back: “Wow!” Wow is very high on our feedback scale, so we feel like we held up our end. These doughty 12-foot dory-bottom sampan-bowed dinghies are built worldwide, with racing fleets in San Francisco Bay and elsewhere. This was Dabbler Sails fourth suit for the popular design. There is a larger variant called the San Francisco Great Pelican, which we have also made sails for, and yet another variant called the Pacific Pelican.

Pelican Girl

A fine sunny day for the launch of the San Francisco Pelican shown above gave the boatbuilder’s gran’daughter, a cheerleader at Ottawa University, a chance to pose with the new boat. We don’t mind her upstaging our duck logo and that roller furling jib. The jib, however, is the reason for this post. We make furling jibs fairly often for small craft. Commonly they are of a very simple design -- low-stretch polyester braid rope in the luff acts like a rod when under tension, delivering torque all the way to the head of the sail. The usual drum and upper swivel complete the rig. Set flying, the jib becomes a forestay. There is no foil. Since many customers have never used a furler before, we send them a few tips and caveats: 1) Furling is easier if the boat is off the wind. Too many skippers think you have to head up, jib flogging, before furling. 2) To get a tight furl, keep some tension on a sheet as the furling line is hauled in. Stop when the sail is half furled, cleat the furling line, and give a sharp tug on the sheet. 3) Make sure there is enough furling line on the drum to get at least three full turns of sheet around the furled sail. 4) Never leave the boat unless the furling line and sheets are safely cleated. Jam cleats don’t count. A jib that unfurls in a squall is probably a dead jib. 5) If the jib doesn’t have sacrificial UV protection, don’t leave it set for lengthy periods in the sun.

Snotters

Snotter (origin unknown) defines an arrangement of rope, perhaps combined with thimbles or blocks, which holds the butt of a sprit or sprit boom. In it’s simplest form it’s a short length of rope with a small eye spliced in one end, the other end of which is simply hitched on the mast. The tapered or notched butt of the sprit rests in the splice, and the hitch can be shoved up the mast to increase the sprit’s thrust on the peak of a sprits‘l. (The snotter for a sprit boom can in theory be shoved down to flatten the sail.). In both cases, however, a purchase is desirable. A 2:1 purchase can be incorporated by seizing in a brass thimble, as here. We made up this snotter to accompany the sail for a Joel White Catspaw dinghy. Not usually the sailmaker’s job, but we were happy to do it for a customer who hasn’t mastered the art of splicing. The pattern is pretty standard for small craft: a thimble (or wooden bull’s eye) is seized in behind a splice. The loop thus formed, which must be of the correct size to keep the thimble or bull’s eye fairly close to the mast, is cow hitched on the mast, and held in place with a thumb cleat on the after side of the mast. The fall can be hitched off on the butt of the sprit, but then adjustment of sail shape entails going forward and standing up -- not a wise thing to do in very small boats. Much better to make the fall long enough to be led through a fairlead on the partners, and then aft, so “peaking up” can be accomplished from the helm.

Cruising Kayak

Renowned ocean racing trimaran designer Dick Newick (Cheers, Moxie, Rogue Wave) retains an affection for kayaks, in which he once did some adventuresome paddling. This one is a 16-ft cruising kayak being built in Paul LaBrie’s Exeter, Maine boatshop for a Spring launch. The sail is a 37-sq ft sprit-boomed (maybe half-wishbone) Gunter batwing design with two full battens and a reef, executed in 3 oz red polyester Stormlite spinnaker cloth. The challenge in designing the sail for kayak or canoe that might go cruising is a serious one. Newick chose a gunter rig for the short spars -- the sail, yard, and batten will all roll up into a 6-ft package to stow in a long bag. The reef will have “one hand reef points,” instead of the usual kind that need to be tied with both hands. You can read about them on the Appendices page of this website. (That shop dog upstaging the kayak is a 110-lb Labrador named Cedar, locally famous for leaping into any available body of water. In the winter, however, he spends quality time snoring in front of the woodstove.)

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.

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!

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.

Sharpie Reef

Designer Reuel Parker shows a traditional vertical reef in the sprit-boomed sail for his version of a Cape Cod oystering skiff. Rarely seen in modern replicas, but common enough in the 1880’s. Howard Chapelle described the system in American Small Sailing Craft: “The reef band was parallel to the hoist (luff). In early boats the reef was made by a series of brails leading through thimbles on the luff rope and spliced into a single fall, which permitted reefing without lowering the sails. In later boats there were usually two reef bands fitted with reef points and the sails had to be lowered to reef, the points being turned in as the sail was again hoisted. In either plan the sprit tackle was slacked off until the reef was made and then again set up; as the reefs were made, the heels of the sprits projected farther forward of the masts.” For a customer who was willing to take Parker’s challenge, instead of opting for the usual reef parallel to the foot, we decided to try and reproduce the earliest version -- individual brails spliced into a single fall. See below.

Vertical Reef Brails

Vertical reef geometry, seen here with the luff stretched horizontal in the loft. The fall is 5/32” polyester braid. It starts as the brail for the reefed head, then passes through five brass thimbles seized to the luff rope at regular intervals. It exits at the tack, and when hauled on, creates the whole reef at one pull. The individual 1/8” brails are dead-ended on the opposite side of the luff thimbles, rove through the reef patch grommets, then the brass thimble, and down a few inches to be spliced into the fall. For splices, I resorted to inserting the brails into the fall using a blunted sail needle towing the small stuff a few inches into the middle of the larger stuff. This splice travels though the thimbles smoothly, creating the bundled reef with minimum effort. See below for the finished product.

Vertically Reefed

The vertical reef, brailed up. Not very pretty or aerodynamic, but suitable for a quick sail reduction in a squall, for a downwind run back to harbor on the rising sea breeze, or for slowing the boat down while scouting the next oyster reef or working traps. A critical aspect of a reef made thus is the likelihood that when the fall is cast off, gravity and friction will prevent the brails from “shaking out” completely. That would leave the luff distorted. The test of how well the slippery small-diameter polyester braid fall and brails mitigate that remains to be seen after the boat is launched. This problem, and other aspects of vertical reefs, is discussed at http://members.fortunecity.com/duckworks/1999/0701/Index.htm