Outriggers?

JerryP

New Member
Has anyone put outriggers, training wheels on the sunfish, Sailfish.
I would like something to stabilize it, until I get back in the swing of it.
Seems counterproductive to spend more time climbing in, than sailing.
 
I have never heard of such a thing. I think by the time you acquire parts to do this and then somehow adapt them to the Sailfish, you would be better off spending the time actually sailing and learning how to keep you on the Sailfish and the Sailfish upright. I also wonder how the boat would sail with outriggers. There would be lots of drag and I think the boat would handle poorly.

I'd suggest picking a day with light winds for your next sail - maybe 5-7 knots max. You may need to go out earlier in the day to find these lighter breezes. I'd follow the guidance of the "learn to sail in 3 days" brochure. I'd also carefully observe where the wind is coming from - flags around the body of water or a piece of yarn will help - and keep the wind direction in mind. In this lighter wind, you should be able to keep yourself roughly centered on the boat. Sit between the handrails on the non-skid part of the deck - these lighter breezes will help you get familiar with the boat without needing to reposition yourself for everything to stay in balance.

Lastly, someone else pointed out that a Sailfish isn't the most stable boat - but people have had fun on them for 50+ years, so I think you will be rewarded by the time you spend on the boat. You should wear a life vest while sailing anyway, and it will help you float high to get back in more easily.

Good luck and have fun!
 
Thanks guys, I am sure outriggers would be a drag monster, which goes against the whole point of a Sailfish.
Thought I would ask though.
 
I wen't out a few days ago for my first time. Obviously I don't know much yet but I do know this. The rudder is quite sensitive to input. It'll get you into and out of trouble pronto. Don't sheet in as hard as was said above. Not that it helped stability in anyway but seating position makes a huge performance difference.
 
I did see a youtube video;
with an older guy who made outriggers for his Sunfish, he said something along the lines that he was getting too old to be thrown out and to be able to right the boat on his own.
 
The "outrigger" makes his Minifish into a proa. Put the "outrigger" on the other side, to take advantage of prevailing winds, and you get a proa more suited to the opposite hemisphere. If he'd set his "outrigger" on its edge, he'd have an advantage on drag. :cool:

Still, he's fixed one problem, while introducing another. :confused:
 
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JerryP
New Member

Has anyone put outriggers, training wheels on the sunfish, Sailfish.
I would like something to stabilize it,

[IMG alt="beldar boathead"]https://sailingforums.com/data/avatars/m/9/9340.jpg?1469313193[/IMG]
beldar boathead
Well-Known Member

I have never heard of such a thing.



Here is a more sensible version of outriggers on a Sunfish (or in this case, a Minifish). This mounting drills through the outward-facing rolled gunwhales without breaking the flotation seal. (I believe these rolled gunwhales are standard on all Mini's, and all standard Sunfish after 1989.) I just finished this today, on the Minifish I brought home a week or so ago. These are the same outriggers from the Sailboats-to-go sailrig that I use on my kayak, canoe and Nelson sailing dinghy. All the STG gear is modular, so all I needed to add to the Mini was the crossbar that the arms plug into. The only non-stock addition is the wood blocks, to lift the crossbar up above the curved deck. Weather permitting, I may sail this for the first time tomorrow.

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I want the outriggers on it at least to start with since I've only ever sailed boats with outriggers so far, and I don't want to add too many new things at once (since I am also new to daggerboard-tiller sailing, as opposed to leeboards plus steering oars). And probably I will leave the crossbar on it even if I eventually sail it without the outriggers, since I also have the STG big wheels that plug into the same crossbar and make the boat into its own dolly:

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Here's an update on my Minifish with outriggers as from last Fall.

To review: I learned how to sail last June with an add-on sailrig from Sailboats-to-go, on my kayak and canoe. This had a 45 SF Snark-sized sail, with outriggers, leeboards and steering oars. Because I like to tinker, I added a jib. The most developed version of that rig was this, in September.
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Then somebody on this site told me that centerboard-tiller boats like Sunfish point better than leeboard boats, so I got a Minifish in November, and sailed it once in November with the Snark sail, with a Sunfish gooseneck attached to the boom so I could raise it on the Minifish mast. I chose the smaller sail because I am used to that, and the Minifish sail was torn anyway. But I kept my outriggers on, since I already have them, and I don't mind sacrificing some speed for greater security against capsizing. That November boat looked like this, except I also had the front-facing gunwhale seat in it. Based on that one test-sail, I could confirm that this does indeed sail better than the canoe, though I still had to learn how to steer and sail with the tiller.

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So now fast-forward to this Spring. Since I knew I was going to sail this boat in the Spring, over the winter I added two more STG crossbars to support the STG mast step, so I could put my lateen-jib rig from the canoe also on this boat, again to start with a rig I am familiar with on this new hull. I sailed this boat several times in March. It looked like this, and has several interesting features.

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First, just like in my canoe, I am sitting up high in a front-facing gunwhale seat with a back. I can do this without losing stability, due to the outriggers. Especially, it is very important to me to have a boat that I can paddle well and easily and if need be for a long distance, if I lose the wind and have to paddle home. The front-facing seat makes this possible, as it turns the boat into a big sit-on-top kayak and it paddles as such, with my big 10-foot kayak paddle. Indeed, it paddles better than a kayak, since the daggerboard and rudder keep it going straight, while a kayak swings from side to side with each stroke.

Second, the midships STG crossbar also serves as a cleatbar: here I have a cam-cleat for the green mainsheet halyard (as suggested by someone on this site last fall) and two horn cleats for the two red jib lines, and plenty of room to tie other stuff to it like my scoop bailer and a dry bag. So I can raise and lower both sails on the water from the cockpit.

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Third and to me most important, with the front-facing seat, I could easily install a rudder lock. Namely, this boat came with a tubular tiller extension, which nicely snaps into broom-handle spring clips that I attached to the back wooden crossbar of the gunwhale seat. So this lets me lock the rudder in any given position, freeing up a hand to work on the sails, or to paddle with the sails still up when the wind is weak. (The rudder is locked, the jib and main sheets are wrapped around an empty plastic spice jar and held between my legs, so both hands are free for the paddle, but the sheets are not cleated.) I did this several times in March and it worked very well: when my speed dropped below 2 mph I started to paddle and brought the speed back up above that, but then as soon as the wind picks up again I can just lay the paddle down on my lap or across the crossbars and sheet in again to resume active sailing.

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So, that was my March boat: all good except for tearing up the hull by beach launching over rocks, successfully patched with Marine-tex as advised by Alan Glos as the best alternative to real fiberglass. So now I'm finally ready to try the original full-size Minifish sail. It was torn in two places, as shown below, and the seller said it needed a new sail for that reason.
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But then I read about this stuff called 'sail tape', which seemed worth a try, and yielded what looked like it might be a decent patch, that would at least hold long enough to try out this sail and see whether I like it or not, and if I do, then I can buy a new one from Neil Pryde (though without the logo alas, as I really like the Minifish logo). Here is the patched sail:

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And here is the boat with the patched original sail now raised for the first time (going back to the big Sunfish mast but keeping the outriggers and the front-facing seat). This is my April boat, which I sailed for the first time a couple of days ago. I really like the Minifish logo. At first I thought it was a 3-d effect; then I thought it was a white fish casting a black shadow; then finally I realized that it's two sunfishes, a smaller white one in front of a larger black one, so the white one is the Mini while the black one is the regular 2-d Sunfish silhouette logo, representing the full-sized Sunfish. So this logo shows the two sizes of Sunfish swimming side by side.

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I was happy with how this test-sailed (top speed 5.4 mph in circa 10 mph winds, which is as fast as I want to go). But I found it very irritating to have half my view blocked by the sail. With the Snark sail I always had the boom over my head just for the convenience of not having to duck under it, and I wasn't worried about getting blown over due to the outriggers. So I got used to being able to enjoy the view in all directions, and it was really irritating to now have this luxury taken away. So this led to April boat version 2, where I hiked the sail way up high on the mast, so the boom would still be over my head even on this much bigger sail. (For this I had to drill the gaff spar, and double up the tackle between gaff and mast to give a 2-to-1 mechanical advantage for raising it.) This was the test-raising of this rig in my yard yesterday, to get the geometry and mechanics and sail position where I wanted it.

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So then the question is, can you really sail this boat with this big sail that high up? I just got home from test-sailing it today (of course as always with the outriggers on) and the answer is yes. The outriggers still absorb most of the heeling force, so I didn't need to hike out any further than shifting sideways in the front-facing seat. (The forecast said 10 mph gusting to 20.) It wasn't that much different from version one with the sail down low, and the view was great. And the 2-to-1 tackle worked fine: I was able to beach-launch in hip waders with the sail down, ship my wheels, kayak-paddle out a ways, then raise my sail all the way up to this big height just by hauling on the halyard from the cockpit seat.

So my main, somewhat polemical conclusion is that outriggers on a Sunfish are good not bad, for someone like me who wants to cruise in comfort and convenience, not race. That is my current answer to the original question in this thread, in disagreement with some of the previous answers that seemed to say that outriggers on a Sunfish are useless or even detrimental.
 

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