Sailfish with bench seat

[bhm]

Looks like this. All three cross-braces are held in place by gunwhale clamps from Sailboats-to-go. The wooden foot-brace has a cam-cleat for the halyard, and a GPS speedometer on a post. I want to sit facing forward since I like to kayak-paddle as well as sail, but I also want to be able to hike out at least a little. So the idea is that I can slide over on the seat and lean out a bit, while still bracing my feet diagonally against the foot-brace, as if the original side-rails were rotated 90 degrees, but this way I have better back support.

I tried this rig for the first time today, on a small flat lake where I test new boats and rigs, and it seemed to work pretty well: top speed of 5.4 mph in what the forecast said was 8 mph wind, with only the 45 SF Snark sail on it, on the short Minifish mast, and with the short Sailfish daggerboard. I sail with outriggers because I'm a wuss about capsizing, but the Sailfish sits so low that the floats were in the water all the time, creating unnecessary drag. So for this test I mounted the floats upside down, and also moved them forward of the mast, to be clear of the paddle blades. At 5.4 mph with some water coming over the bow, the floats didn't even reach the water yet. Soon I'll be taking this rig out on big wavy Cayuga Lake with the 65 SF Minifish sail and daggerboard, but first I wanted to make sure I could steer it OK with this seating arrangement, with the tiller behind the seats.

 

[Mama H Chicago]

I’m confused completely by this. But if you are enjoying it, then good on you!

 

[signal charlie]

Very creative!

 

[bhm]

Very creative!

Thanks. I never had the mechanical chops to work on cars, and there isn't that much you can do to a bicycle, but I'm having a lot of late-in-life fun now, working on my boats.

 

[Alan S. Glos]

Steering. Have you thought about rigging a continuous line steering arrangement with two small blocks aft near the tiller and two blocks forward, maybe attached to the outer poarts of your footrest. Tie the line around the tiller snug through the four blocks and you can tug on any part of the line to steer. I have seen such a rigs on sailing canoes and it works fine after you get used to a line reather than a tiller.

Alan Glos
Cazenovia, NY

 

[bhm]

Steering. Have you thought about rigging a continuous line steering arrangement with two small blocks aft near the tiller and two blocks forward, maybe attached to the outer poarts of your footrest. Tie the line around the tiller snug through the four blocks and you can tug on any part of the line to steer. I have seen such a rigs on sailing canoes and it works fine after you get used to a line reather than a tiller.

Alan Glos
Cazenovia, NY

This is a very intriguing idea, and I've been musing on it overnight. Adding blocks aft would not be my first choice because I only have three sets of gunwhale clamps and they are all in use for my three cross-braces, and they are pretty expensive (circa $50 per set). But then I recalled that the Grumman sailing canoe had a rope-steering system of some kind (whether a closed loop or something else), and for that the ropes are attached to a crosswise rocker bar on top of the rudder rather than a fore and aft tiller:

So I could avoid using additional blocks aft by putting a similar wooden rocker bar on top of the wooden Sailfish rudder, and running the steering lines from the ends of that to a first set of blocks on the ends of the seat brace. But I am still thinking over just what path would be best to complete the loop, Probably I will try some version of this eventually, but first I need to learn how this rig rides with a bigger sail in bigger wind and waves, so I will know better how I may be moving around in it.

I had it out yesterday in the big lake with the 65 SF Minifish sail and confirmed that I can launch and handle it OK (first time with the Sailfish hull in the big lake), but the wind was very light and I was paddling half the time. But one thing I learned already is that I'll want to add wooden side-rails between the seat and footbrace to complete a low square cockpit, because the process of scooching upwind and uphill across the seat to balance the boat when it heels over requires something for my leg to push against on the downwind and downhill side. Otherwise I have to use my sheet hand to push down on the back of the seat to lift my butt enough to scooch over, which is an awkward nuisance.

So fixing that is the first thing, more than improving the steering, as grabbing the tiller extension behind the seat is working well enough for these initial tests, at least on flat water. Especially since I found that I can tether the end of the tiller extension to the back of the seat with a foot or so of slack, and still have full range of steering by kinking the joint of the extension one way or the other. So I can entirely let go of the tiller without losing it aft, if I need both hands for something else. And I already arranged a shorter loop to lock it square for paddling, so this steering rig is usable for now. And then the options for improvements to that, either by ropes or by some different form of tiller extension (which was my previous plan) will look different once I complete a square cockpit and also know more about how much I will be moving around. Certainly I would want to include a steering lock that would clamp down on the rope, so I can hold any course while sailing and paddling, as I do now on my Minifish with a broomstick clamp on the seat to hold the tiller extension with the rudder at any given angle:

I'm thinking maybe the rope can run close to a jam cleat that I can push it down in to lock the rudder at an angle, and pull it back out again to free it up. But where to put this will depend on the rope path, and there will be many more options for this once I complete a closed rectangular cockpit, so I will do that first, probably in the next few days since my car is going to be in the shop. But if I do add a steering rope I think I will probably try to arrange it so that I still have the tiller working as well, so I can change off between them, and have that as a fallback.