Thanks. This looks like something I might be able to try, depending on how far over I can roll the boat with the outriggers on. Further than you might think; during my capsize drills with the outrigger canoe I could roll an outrigger entirely down under the water to capsize the boat just by standing on the gunwhale, so I might be able to roll the boat far enough to tack this way by standing up in the cockpit, even with the outriggers on. I'll find out next season. It will help that I plan to keep sailing at first with my sail higher up on a taller mast than you are supposed to, for the sake of more comfortable headroom under the boom, so this form of tacking wouldn't require ducking down so far, under my higher boom. (I may not have mentioned that I'm 71 years old, therefore not quite as flexible as I used to be.)Here is a video of roll tacking in lighter air. It takes practice but much harder to go into irons.
Thanks for the link. I had read about this "sailing backwards" technique for a sternpost rudder in sailing books, but never actually saw it done. My sailing canoe had steering oars, not a rudder, so this method was not an option. So this is another thing to try next season.Regarding this comment from bhm ......."So for this kind of sailing I only have to come about once on the whole trip, and it's not much of a loss of time to come to a dead stop to do that, and hike the boat around to the other tack with a paddle, to start the return trip. "
By working on fundamentals such as practicing tacking, you should not get stuck in irons. Your rig with the pontoons will make it harder, but hopefully with practice your tacking will improve. If you do get stuck in irons, the advice here should help you get out: WSA How To Series - How to get out of Irons - YouTube You definitely should not be needing a paddle to get out of irons - the technique here is the proven way to get out of irons.
Nice job of threading lag screws into the rudder.I called them when it arrived and they are sending me a shipping label to return it, but based on what you say in that other post it sounds as if I might be better off just keeping it at the discount price and using that as an upgrade to this wooden board. Especially since my quick-and-dirty repair to the split wooden rudder using lag screws seems to have performed OK on my test cruise, so maybe I didn't need to replace that rudder in a hurry after all. So maybe my $265 is better spent that way, right now?
Nice job of threading lag screws into the rudder.(Two rare "cools").
I use a lot of lags (lag-screws or lag-bolts) around my property's "projects". What I've found is that lag screws are never as tight as the first time they're in place. I'd give them a season of use, dry the wood, and only then grind away to "fair" them to the leading edge. Barring misadventure, you shan't need to touch them a third time.
My first choice, as well...But rather than use a hand-held device, I think I would do that with the 5-inch bench grinder that someone gave me recently, visible in the second rudder pic. I think this would make it easier to match the angle of the rudder blade, by resting it on a support and leaning it in to the grinder wheel at a fixed angle, like a lathe only in reverse, i.e. leaning the workpiece into the rotating cutting wheel rather than leaning the chisel into the rotating workpiece.
However, I'm not sure how much of the bolt heads I would want to take off, since that is also what is mainly holding the split part in place, since the shanks of the bolts are smooth where they pass through the split part, and with the heads shaved too far down (i.e. like finish nails) the split part might gradually work lose. I might just leave it as is.
What if you take everything apart, fill the threaded holes with epoxy, put epoxy on the joint between the two pieces, and fill the unthreaded holes with epoxy, and then screw it back together before the epoxy kicks. I think you could grind down the boltheads and that will likely NEVER come apart.