Photo 1 - WRC 6800 rigged with non-battened sails.
A big problem I have encountered with my project is difficulty in conducting sufficient sea-trials to assess the viability of novel aspects of my multihull designs. Trialling to at least the proof-of-concept stage is essential, as I learnt early in my working life that ideas alone are worth very little. I have decreased this problem by obtaining a mooring for my fibreglass catamaran on the Clyde river about 2 minutes drive from my home. This location and the town of Nelligen is 16kms upstream from the coast of Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea. The Clyde River river is a beautiful big deep tidal-river used by coastal steamers during 1860 - 1900's to support a gold rush. The sailing conditions in this area are generally gusty-winds from all directions and really unsuitable for the trialling - but typical of the conditions in most inland waters where I hope to sail my creations. Regardless of this, I can now go sailing whenever the wind conditions are suitable for sailing and without requiring others to assist me (saves me having to apologise when trialling an idea does not work as planned).
Photo 1 shows the catamaran I am presently trialling, rigged with two no-batten sails and which are stowed by furling around their mast, requiring no more than 10 minutes to rig. Not as pretty as the fully-battened sails shown on this catamaran in the last photo in the March/April 2003 installment. The sail in the photo is a 5.9sqm Wayler sailboard stormsail which I used once on my sailboard in high winds and was impressed by the way it held its shape.
I sailed this catamaran on 30 August on the river in wild winds and it sailed fast in the gusts with no worry about pitch-poling and capsizing. The other sail is a real bag and I would like to replace it with a sail like the Wayler and would appreciate help in acquiring such a sail.
Since August I have concentrated on trialling and improving the self-tacking aluminium centreplate shown in the December 2004 installment. The outcome of this has lead me to presently constructing a steerable kickup centreboard to be located on an extended forward deck.
Also I have trialled a steering oar to see if it can take over steering when the rudder becomes ineffective during lulls in the wind and opposing tidal flows. And am learning to propel the cat by sculling with the oar which is preferable to starting the outboard motor in the lulls. Results so far are positive and the remaining issues are resolving the ergonomics of operation of the oar - such as optimum location of its fulcrum and length of the oar. My underlying interest in the steering oar is based on the fact that it is the most reliable way to control a boat in surf.
Apart from solving specific problems, these trials expose boat-handling problems such as the need to quickly raise the centreplate and the outboard motor; space on the fore-deck to facilitate picking-up a mooring and for stowing an anchor and line; how to shift the cat over a muddy and rocky shore when beached by a falling tide and deficiencies in the design of my 3.3hp Mercury outboard motor which I shall cover in a following installment. Late last year I converted the port hull from a curved fibreglass deck to a flat plywood deck - as shown in photo 1. It allows me to easily walk to and stand at the ends of the hull - which sure helps mooring and beaching operations.
Photo 1 - WRC 6800 rigged with non-battened sails.
At present this catamaran is in my yard for removal of barnicles acquired during the last seven weeks in the river, and for installation of a kickup-steerable-centreboard.
Once I have optimised the centreboard system I intend to develop a wingmast/soft-sail rig using the fully-battened sailboard sails modified by replacing the luff-sock with a bolt-rope designed to slide in a sailtrack on the trailing edge of the wingmast. I envisage a wingmast of about 300mm chord - I would appreciate any help in its design.
I am still experimenting with my plywood dory-hulled multihulls with the aim to provide input for producing plans for plywood a catamaran, trimaran and proa. Photo 2 shows a trimaran I have trialled. Note that its amas are located more forward than conventional tris which is where I think they should be. The construction of this tri makes it easy to relocate the amas to other locations on its hull.
Photo 2 - WRC 5600 Trimaran
Photo 3 WRC 5600 proa
The proa shown in photo 3 is designed to shunt by moving the foot of its sail along a sailtrack to the other end of its hull. Steering is by reversable spade-rudders. Since the taking the photo I have substituted steering oars for the rudders as shown in photo 4.
Photo 4
Ultimately I would like to change the proa by building an asymmetric hull which, with the steering oars would result in a simple and functional craft for exploring sea shores.
Other aspects of my project that I hope to publish in future installments, are construction details of the fibreglass hull and particularly its internal wooden stringer and cross-section frame structure which provides mechanical hull-stiffness and points for attachment of the beamchange arms, mast steps and self-draining cockpit.
I have produced a centrehull for WRC6800 as outlined in DRG1 of the Dec 2003 installment which also provides a way to construct for example, a much simpler and lightweight hull for WRC6800. I have manufactured the masts for the Mast-aft-of-cabin shown in that drawing and hope to trial it this Summer.