Minifish sail

Merrimac

Member
There is a Minifish for sale in the local classified with a trailer and all the necessary gear, but the sail look to be in pretty poor shape. So- on to my question, where can a Minifish sail be bought? It is going for a steal of a price, but i don't want to have to by a $6-700 custom sail. Is there anyplace to get Minifish sail for a decent price?

Thanks,
M
 
See this previous thread: http://sailingforums.com/threads/sunfish-sail-on-a-mini.22813/

You could buy a new (or used) Sunfish sail and use it, but it will have more sail area and thus more power, so you'd have to be careful to not over-power your Minifish. You could also check with a sail shop to see if they'd cut a Sunfish sail down to the smaller Minifish size for you - it might be cheaper than buying a whole new custom sail.

Intensity Sails and APS both have cheap(er) recreational Sunfish sails if you want a new one. The "For Sale" section of the Forum usually has some used sail options, too.


Cheers,
tag
 
There are a couple of options out there. Torresen is a good source for sunfish parts and I'm very happy with the sunfish cover I got from Slo Sail and Canvas, so hopefully they'll be a good source (with a logo to boot!) Kevane seems to be the bargain option and I think I've seen some positive reviews on these threads somewhere.

http://shop.torresen.com/ships_store/?p=details&ident=390307
http://www.slosailandcanvas.com/servlet/the-1568/Minifish-Sail-Colored/Detail
http://www.kevanesails.com/pr_minifish_sail.php
 
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There is a Minifish for sale in the local classified with a trailer and all the necessary gear, but the sail look to be in pretty poor shape. So- on to my question, where can a Minifish sail be bought? It is going for a steal of a price, but i don't want to have to by a $6-700 custom sail. Is there anyplace to get Minifish sail for a decent price?

Thanks,
M
Hi
I have two options if you are still looking. I have a used minifish sail -red white and blue in excellent condition for $110.00 or a brand new minifish sail orange yellow with a window for $195.00
If you would like piks email me at [email protected]
Also a sunfish sail will require longer spars. Your mast ,however will fit.
 
Hi
I have two options if you are still looking. I have a used minifish sail -red white and blue in excellent condition for $110.00 or a brand new minifish sail orange yellow with a window for $195.00
If you would like piks email me at [email protected]
Also a sunfish sail will require longer spars. Your mast ,however will fit.
Thanks but the 'fish sold. :(
 
Does anyone have experience with the minifish ii?

M

I have a minifish ii as well as minifish (and sunfish). The sunfish is my racing fix - weekly at the club and one time or another at most levels (excl pan am, now that I'm thinking about it) but truth be told I never got into messing around in sunfish. In years past i've been a pretty active supporter of the sunfish class, but always racing and never for recreation.

I really get a kick out of the m2, however. It has about the same Portsmouth rating as the sunfish - and faster than the base mini - but it's a world of difference. It is very responsive and accelerates well - i can literally sail rings around sunfish in very, very light air - however once the wind picks up sunfish leave the m2 in the dust, especially downwind. But it's one boat I can't get enough of, just for the fun of it. And since I'm just shy of the minifish's load capacity, I sit pretty low - i'm a slug to what a kid could make of it, and I still don't get tired of it. Whenever I'm in it I'm reminded of Miatas.

Did I mention that it's fun? (now that I'm killing my chances to pick up another cheap used m2 rig). The whole rig fits easily into my compact car. I have plenty of old sunfish parts, and old boards and rudders get the perfect second life - so it's the rig that's the key.

Switching topic to the regular mini for a second, I've picked up the older sailfish spars - mini size - for next to nothing and given them a new mini life. I also salvaged a broken sunfish mast - they used to break at deck-level if they broke at all - sawed the broken bottom straight and re-insert the end cap, and have a almost exactly a mini mast. When I get a chance I'm going to try to cut down and hem an intensity sunfish sail to minifish size (with window!) - a boatbuilding buddy has the stitching machine an all, and we'll see how that works.

But back to the m2 - if I can I'd like to transform my other minis into m2's and maybe get some m2 racing going, and the only real hang up is the rig. I saw where a poster ( here and on his moth blog) had some good ideas on a larger moth-size rig with (i recall) a modified europe sail but I really would prefer to come up with a rig closer to original, for example without stays and closer to original size. I've been keeping an eye out for good ideas ( no, not a supersunfish rig on a minish, or a full sunfish rig, or anything) but something of equivalent performance and characteristics to the original m2 rig. I toyed with trying my carbon windsurf mast.

But I'm still looking for an answer that we could all standardize and adapt (or adopt). There are many more mini's than m2's, and maybe we could get something going on the m2 level with a good rig solution. I'm also trying to figure out a reasonable m2 sail substitute that will fit m2 spars (the foot is the catch).

Anyway, if you have any particular questions, ask away. (go ahead, ask me how I like my m2!)
 
Minifish2,

Okay,
The m2 is a cat rig?( I read somewhere that it is sloop, and other places cat:confused: )
What are trouble spots on the minfish?
how much do they go for?
Trailer or cartop?
ease of learning to sail
could two people fit in the minifish(80 and 120)?
...how much do you like your m2 :D

Thanks,
M
 
Minifish2,

Okay,
The m2 is a cat rig?( I read somewhere that it is sloop, and other places cat:confused: )
What are trouble spots on the minfish?
how much do they go for?
Trailer or cartop?
ease of learning to sail
could two people fit in the minifish(80 and 120)?
...how much do you like your m2 :D

Thanks,
M

I don't have m2 pictures handy - it's on the club rack now and maybe in a month or two - but the rig is exactly like a small-scale super sunfish. I know you see 'cat' references but my catboat buddies would cringe and so do I. The rig is almost exactly a force5's or super sunfish. It is higher aspect with longer stays than, say, a laser 4.2. If you google 'minifish ii YouTube' some guy has a video that's not great but it's something. If you google this forum or his blog you can see earwigoagin's fish & chips (with stayed mast and the Europe sail).

The difference with the minifish 2 is it's light, light, light (mine range from 75 to 85 pounds), not a particularly buoyant hull compared to a sunfish, and much less stable. A 220 pound skipper is pushing it and will be riding low. I can't imagine 2 sailing it comfortably unless they're eight years old -- and then the instability would be an issue. They are easy to cartop - I've taken mine at 80 mph on my subcompact ( bear in mind that I also cartop my sunfish, and used to carry a force5 around on a little Subaru Loyale) - but the difference is that one person with good balance can almost muscle around a minifish alone, if they don't mind the occasional mis-hap.

If we are talking just base, everything is easy and can be sunfish cheap. As for price, mine have averaged about $200 but all needed at least some parts. Since they use Sunfish parts - the obsolete wooden sunfish boards, same rudders and gudgeons with shortened tiller and extension, even same sheets and blocks - and since there are no organized class standards to worry about, unlike sunfish, they are great second (or fifth) boats for sunfish owners. You can use revived cast-off parts.

For the m2 for example, I use a now-obsolete, discarded old-style laser vang - not competitive any more on Lasers but easy to reach and just right for re-use on m2's.

As for easy to learn, not if you are much over 12. For young kids it's a great boat - competitive sunfish juniors at my club like to borrow it. The m2 is popular and if i lend it out it dissapears out of sight for really long stretches. The controls are similar enough to lasers but the boat is so much smaller. I could see opti kids getting really spoiled. For an adult learning to sail, however, this isn't the best and sunfish is more forgiving -- though if you have decent balance and flexibility it would be fun soon enough. Features I like are the molded cockpit without that sunfish-like lip, so water drains easier on capsizes and such, and i like the flexibility to lead control lines to the cockpit if you want. Plus the sunfish rudder on the smaller boat is great. My first fix on any minifish is to reset the hiking strap so it's fore-aft.

I think one reason this never caught on is that when they were new, m2's were almost as much as sunfish - maybe $50 less - and while they are a blast they are a lot less boat for the money, with no organized class or anything.

Speaking of which, if anyone could come up with a cheap but effective rig and sail substitution, I could see a real revival.
 
Hi Minifish 2,

When you can get to it I'd appreciate some pictures of the Minifish II rig and some notes on how to rig it, there is a gent I know who bought one but cant figure out the rigging. He is new to small sailboats so is not familiar with SS rig. We can capture some of that info and add it to the knowledge base.

Thanks
Kent
 

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Hi Minifish 2,

When you can get to it I'd appreciate some pictures of the Minifish II rig and some notes on how to rig it, there is a gent I know who bought one but cant figure out the rigging. He is new to small sailboats so is not familiar with SS rig. We can capture some of that info and add it to the knowledge base.

Thanks
Kent

I will have to get some pictures this spring. In the meantime, just to get an idea, there is a helpful fellow "Kyle" who put up a youtube video of his m2.

Unfortunately you'll likely cringe as it plays and his really nice sail flogs, but you can get the general idea.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I use the old-style Laser vang that to me seems easy to set up and use and is unobtrusive, and I also changed out the mainsheet block.

Unlike the Sunfish or Laser (but instead like the force 5) you don't use a transom traveller, though there may be one on the hull for use with a standard rig. -The mainsheet is all forward of the cockpit and not looped back to the end of the boom and down.

Since there is no m2 class and no mandatory rigging limitations, you can go with what works for control line modifications. Weeks' website has some Force 5 rigging illustrations that may be helpful just to get an idea of what we're trying to do, generally speaking, though there is more hardware than the stock m2: http://force5sailboats.com/serv03.htm I've found adults don't need nearly as much leverage with the lines with the much smaller m2 sail.

I refer to this old post from time to time for inspiration, and also for the hope that we can come up with a home made 'aftermarket' version (but unlike this moth conversion, unstayed and closer to original size). I like the line controls, but again with the smaller m2 sail area you don't need as much purchase. As with this (and in contrast to the boat in the video) I changed the stock hiking strap. http://sailingforums.com/threads/laser-sail-on-sunfish.19743/

One tip for your friend - with that base ring on the mast for leading the controls, and the sleeved sail, it might be easy for a novice sailor to overlook the very basic point of making sure the rig is tied in securely to the hull by something more than, say, the outhaul control line on a clam cleat. And like a Laser or SuperSunfish, the boom just slides onto the gooseneck pin and is only really held there by line tension, which might seem sketchy to a non-sailor, and will be sketchy if things become unattached. Anyway, after he has set up, he should just double-check that everything will stay intact in a capsize.

Now all that said, I hesitate to sound at all opportunistic, but if that fellow finds the m2 set-up just too complicated and as a result is not having fun with it, I might suggest that I would gladly trade a standard minifish rig and sail plus a nice pile of cash or a second minifish hull, or who knows what else we can come up with in trade for his M2 rig -- but that would certainly be unseemly right now, so I won't suggest that here. Unless he wants.
 
Hi Minifish2,

Thanks you for all of the information, I have passed it along to Jim. His MII has some mast step issues that need repair, but he is working on it.
Do you still have the rigging brochure?

Thanks
Kent
 
There is a Minifish for sale in the local classified with a trailer and all the necessary gear, but the sail look to be in pretty poor shape. So- on to my question, where can a Minifish sail be bought? It is going for a steal of a price, but i don't want to have to by a $6-700 custom sail. Is there anyplace to get Minifish sail for a decent price?

Thanks,
M
torresen marine inc. $285.
There is a Minifish for sale in the local classified with a trailer and all the necessary gear, but the sail look to be in pretty poor shape. So- on to my question, where can a Minifish sail be bought? It is going for a steal of a price, but i don't want to have to by a $6-700 custom sail. Is there anyplace to get Minifish sail for a decent price?

Thanks,
M
 
Hey I know this is an old thread but I just aquired a minifish 2 but it's missing the lower mast :( would I be able to cut down a sunfish mast to the right length. my other option was to custom make one from some 6061 aluminum ... any thoughts?
 

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