A Short i550 Video (and Little Walter)

Here's a short video taken from a J24 that was sailing downwind under main and genoa.  The J24 was traveling at about five knots.  According to our Speedpuck, we were moving at about eleven knots in the i550 at the time the video was taken.

The main and jib on the i550 were made by Ryan Malmgren of  Mad Sails in Madison, Wisconsin.  The spinnaker is a used Melges 20 spinnaker.

The music is Little Walter's 1952 harmonica instrumental, Juke.

DIY Carbon Spreaders

Last fall, my crew and I managed to get Lunatic Fringe in the water for a few sails before it was too crazy cold. On one of those sails, we spun out a few times with the kite up. I didn't like the way the mast flexed and bent at the masthead during one of those spinouts. So this winter we added a pair of upper spreaders to support the masthead. It turned out to be a fun project.

The home built spreaders are carbon with balsa wood cores. I had three sheets of 5/16 inch balsa on hand so I laminated them together into a one inch thick balsa board . Then I cut the balsa into two spreader shaped cores similar to the shape and style of the existing spreaders on my C-Tech mast. The inboard ends were cut to give them the same 30 degree aft sweep as the existing spreaders.

The spreader tips were reinforced with one inch of epoxy thickened with chopped fiberglass and cabosil. The thickened epoxy was poured into a mold created by wrapping tape around the end of the spreader tip, extending the tape beyond the end of the spreader by an inch to form a cavity into which the thickened epoxy was poured while the spreader was clamped upright. After the tips cured, the edges of the core were sanded and filed into a slightly more aerodynamic shape to match the existing C-Tech Spreaders.

Next, carbon unis, carbon weave and an outside layer of fiberglass were vacuum bagged onto the cores. I used a flexible garbage bag for a vacuum bag with two edges sealed with sticky tape. After coming out of the bag, the spreaders were trimmed, epoxied and sanded smooth.

Then we cut the inboard ends to fit around the mast and carefully filed the soft balsa to get the inboard ends tapered to fit around the mast while being tipped slightly upward.

We also made end caps for the spreader tips out of fiberglass board which I later painted black to match the rest of the rig.

After taping off the sail track and the work area on the mast, all surfaces to be bonded were carefully sanded and cleaned. Then, after clamping the mast tightly to a couple of saw horses, we tied the spreaders to the mast, carefully measuring the tip distance of each spreader to the masthead to get the right dihedral angle. It took a little bit of fidgeting to get the spreaders just where we wanted them, matching the 30 degree aft sweep of the existing spreaders with the correct upward angle. We used string and tape to adjust it and tie it all in place.

Then we used five minute epoxy to tack the spreaders to the mast. We then used West G-flex thickened with cabosil to glue and fillet the spreaders in place. After the fillets were touched up and sanded smooth, I laminated several wraps of 1 inch carbon tape over the fillets. The tape was covered in peel ply and stretch film to consolidate the layup.

To finish, the joint and spreaders were lightly sanded and several layers of unthickened epoxy were painted on the joint and sanded smooth to blend in. The final finish will be three coats of System 3 water based linear polyurethane clear paint.

More photos are available at http://picasaweb.google.com/intune99

Sailing Report

Well, Lunatic Fringe is put away for the winter. But we managed to go sailing a few times this fall before it got too cold. We sailed a few times in light air and twice in moderate wind. We still have a lot to learn but I thought I would pass on a few tentative thoughts about how the boat sails and handles.

Moderate Air (10-15)

In moderate air, the boat feels fully powered up when sailing into the wind - but not overpowered. The boat steers and sails comfortably to weather with three crew in those conditions. When sailing into the wind, we felt that the boat sailed best with our weight shifted forward with everybody ahead of the traveler.

Downwind, we were pretty comfortable sailing in 10 knots of wind but by 15, we had to anticipate the gusts to stay on our feet. We had to watch for the gusts and ease, hike and steer lower. We also had to shift our weight aft to avoid having the bow dig in and steer us to weather.

We were knocked down several times during the learning process. Once knocked flat, it doesn't take a lot of wind in the kite to keep you that way. Our biggest problem was having crew weight too far forward in the gusts. Bow steering is a significant issue. The chine digs in and steers the boat to windward which leads to a broach. And when we are knocked down, we might need to blow the kite halyard for a second or two in order to allow the boat to right itself.

Although we were knocked down several times (because of our own ineptitude), at no time did the boat feel like it was going to capsize.

We definitely have a lot of room to get faster next season but we had several greats rides with a top recorded speed on my gps of 14.61 knots.

Light Air

In light air, the boat feels underpowered. Lots of drag and not enough sail area. New sails will help get us a bit more sail area and better technique on our part can help sort out the drag issue. The wide, flat bottom is the culprit in light air. We concluded that we need to constantly shift crew weight to keep the boat heeled and the back end out of the water. One crew generally sits on the cabin top forward of the mast and shifts back and forth from the windward side to the leeward side to maintain proper heel and balance. The amount of heel that felt fastest in those conditions was more heel than we are used to. In light air, flat does not feel fast.

Changes

After sailing a few times, I'm considering a couple of changes before next season. First, I'm getting rid of the mainsheet swivel and going to a fiddle block with a cam directly on the traveler track.

Second, I'm considering adding a second set of spreaders on the mast to support the kite. I'm not sure whether it's necessary but it looks easy enough to do and will give me peace of mind. There's a nice video on You-Tube that shows how to fabricate and mount carbon spreaders. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O687PMgI7WM

I'm also considering making a new rudder. I don't think the one I built is quite long enough. But I need to think about that a little bit before taking the plunge.

Finally, I intend to add hiking straps. I always intended to have hiking straps but decided to go without them this fall in order to get the boat in the water for the last few days of good weather.

For more build photos, I have several galleries of pics available here: http://picasaweb.google.com/intune99

Video - i550 Sailboat Lunatic Fringe Shakedown Sail

We are still experiencing warm and windless conditions here in the "Icebox" but my friend Roger did take a video of one of our shakedown sails in light air. We originally intended to fly the spinnaker but the halyard was binding when we launched and in the process of trying to free it, I lost the end in the mast. Because we were short on time, we went sailing with white sails rather than re-feed the halyard. When we had the time to re-feed the halyard, all we did was pull the boat over to get to the mast tip. We dropped a string down the mast with a thin lead weight attached which we used to pull the halyard through the block, slot, mast and out the bottom.

The sails we are using are used. Both are in rough shape but they were inexpensive.

There wasn't much wind and in those conditions, having crew weight forward and low seemed to be the right move. And close hauling seemed slow. It felt like we needed to open up a bit and foot off to keep our speed up.

Construction pictures are posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/intune99 .

Ron Bowman

#108 "Lunatic Fringe"