the idea of using a polystyrene block as a stringer alone makes it pretty clear these were more or less disposable. It's nice they've gone along for 60 or so years though. Mine's almost fifty years old and I put it through a fairly heavy stress test yesterday
Well... nothing but the core idea of dinghy sailing, which is to balance (and steer) the boat with the weight of the sailor(s). You're actually close to getting the point when you say:Am I missing anything?
That's what sailing a non-ballasted monohull is quite a bit of the time: keeping your body weight as far as possible from the centreline of the boat, and not only should you reach a straight tiller from that position but also one that is angled way to leeward! Unless your arms are longer than most people are tall, you need something in between there...you'd have to go overboard to be unable to reach a straight tiller.
But on the sunfish, you'd have to go overboard to be unable to reach a straight tiller. Am I missing anything? Any reason not to?
This is a good point! I will think more about this before I change anything.Well... nothing but the core idea of dinghy sailing, which is to balance (and steer) the boat with the weight of the sailor(s). You're actually close to getting the point when you say:That's what sailing a non-ballasted monohull is quite a bit of the time: keeping your body weight as far as possible from the centreline of the boat, and not only should you reach a straight tiller from that position but also one that is angled way to leeward! Unless your arms are longer than most people are tall, you need something in between there...
This could become a very long post as we're talking something this fundamental, but I'll just give you one tip: if you want to improve both space and reachability, don't shorten the extension but the tiller. One counterintuitive thing about tiller/extension geometry is that a shorter tiller is easier to reach, which is because you don't have to move the end as much for a given rudder angle.