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Confessions of a Lug Nut |
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Led by designers like Phil Bolger and more recently
John Welsford, Ian Oughtred,
and Jim
Michalak, lugsails have been increasing
in popularity, particularly in smaller designs built
by their owners.
Based on almost 20 years of experience with balanced
and dipping luggers, I think there is a good reason
for this. Luggers, particularly balanced luggers (and
probably the Chinese lug, with which I have no experience)
are probably the most efficient rig there is in terms
of cost, performance for the amount of work done by
the crew and the height of the mast. They also simply
outperform many more modern rigs in many conditions,
much to the consternation of those with preconceived
notions about unstayed and “primitive”
rigs. (I also have experience with sloop, sprit, gaff
and lateen rigs. At the moment we have a 30 footer
(custom design from Bolger), a 20-footer (Michalak’s
Frolic2), and 11-footer (Piccup
Pram), all balanced luggers.)
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"LeDulcimer",
our 30 footer with her balanced lug rig.
(click
images to enlarge) |
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Let’s start, like I did, with probably the
least used lug rig, the dipping lugger. A dipping
lugger is a four-sided sail, but it has no boom, only
a yard. Bolger has accurately described it as a big
genoa sail with it’s top cut off and requiring
no forestay. Or if it helps, think of a four-sided
Chinese lug, but with no battens or boom. Since the
sail projects in front of the mast at both the head
and the foot, if it were tacked normally, on one tack
it would be aback against the mast (when its on the
windward side), and dipping luggers perform poorly
in that configuration. The traditional method is to
lower the sail, cast off the tack tie down line, carry
the sail and yard around to the new leeward side of
the boat, reattach the tack line and reraise the sail.
Bolger recommended the dipping lug 20 years ago
when he designed the 30-footer Le Dulci-Mer for me
for single-handed offshore use. The thought was while
offshore, tacking would be fairly rare, and so the
slowness of tacking or gybing a dipping lug would
be mitigated. Rather than the traditional method of
tacking, Bolger specified two sails, one on each side
of the mast. Tacking would involve lowering one sail
and raising the other.
 The
plan was based on his experience with a 450-square
foot dipping lug as the foresail on his own Resolution,
plus some experiments with twin dipping lugs on one
of his June Bug hulls.
For the 385-square-foot cat rig, Bolger came up
with some nice touches. For one thing, he put the
tacks of the sails on a traveler. (See diagram at
right - click to enlarge) This allowed the tack to
be hauled to the windward rail for a better set of
sail on a relatively narrow hull, although it was
also one more job to do in tacking. Second, it was
obvious that parrels would not work for attaching
the yards to the mast in a rig where one sail is raised
as the other is lowered. Instead, 1/4-inch stainless
“jackstays” were run up each side of the
mast.  These
do not have to be bar tight as they do not support
the mast; I merely lashed the bottoms to padeyes bolted
into the deck next to the mast. On each jackstay was
a stainless steel thimble,
around which was spliced a rope which was tied to
the yard. Nearly frictionless, this system allowed
the sails to be raised or lowered on any point of
sail and proved jam-free. (See diagram at left) Next,
as anyone who has sailed with a balanced lug knows,
when the halyard is released, the yard comes down
aft end first and tries to crack the skull of anyone
unfortunate enough to be in the way. This isn’t
a problem with small rigs that are easy to physically
manhandle (personhandle?), or where the sail is raised
and lowered from the mast, out of range of the mad
yard. But on this boat, sail handling is done from
the cockpit and that rather heavy yard on a 385-square
foot sail is a danger. Bolger designed control lines,
or downhauls, that led from the forward and aft ends
of the yard through blocks on deck and then to the
sail handling position in the cockpit. In practice,
the aft line proved unneeded and was discarded. The
only requirement is that the deck turning block must
be forward of where the front end of the yard will
be when the sail is lowered. When lowering the sail,
take in the downhaul as the halyard is eased. In essence,
the downhaul turns the halyard attachment into a pivot
point. Pulling on the downhaul causes the aft end
of that lethal yard to lever upwards.
I use a 1/4-inch double-braid Dacron line for the
downhaul. By happy accident, I discovered that dropping
the line into a ½-inch clam cleat would provide
tension on the line, yet allow it to feed through
when raising the sail. Sort of an automatic clutch
that simplified sail hoisting.
A note here. When the boat was converted to a balanced
lug rig, the jackstay and forward downhaul were retained,
and lazy jacks were added. The sail now falls always
under control into lazy jacks. It isn’t the
neat bundle that boats with full-batten Chinese lugs
report, but it’s fully under control until I
can do a neater furl.
Certainly one of the best things about the dipping
lug was aesthetics. Close hauled or on a close reach,
the curve of the sail is a thing of beauty –
my favorite of all rigs (gaff is second) to look at.
That might be because it’s only attached to
the mast at the yard, and the sail makes a great sweeping
curve from the windward rail, around the mast and
back to the stern. (I’ve always thought the
way mine,with the tack on the windward rail, looked
better than most others I’ve seen in photos,
where the sail was tacked on the centerline. Maybe
that’s an owner’s conceit.)
And another is the apparent efficiency of the sail.
It always gave me the feeling, more so than any other
rig, of producing great power with little effort,
seeming to give good speed with little appearance
of strain. As Bolger notes, there’s no mast
– or for that matter even a forestay –
in front of the sail to interfere with the flow of
air, so efficiency is enhanced.
What’s wrong with it? Well, it’s a lot
of work to tack and reef. Plus, if rigged like mine,
you have to buy two mainsails (although perhaps there’s
something to be said for redundancy in an extra main).
And without a boom, it’s loses some efficiency
well off the wind.
Of these, the first is the most critical. Bolger
said his 450 square foot sail was made out of 6 ounce
sailcloth (or perhaps a little lighter) and he had
no problem raising it by hand. I had ordered my mains
made out of 8 ounce cloth, thinking to make them as
bulletproof as possible. It also made them too heavy
to raise by hand. Providence intervened as I found
a pair of single speed #20 Barlow winches, complete
with handle, at a marine flea market for $25. They
only needed cleaning and greasing, and that hoisting
problem was solved. (I now use a two-speed Barlow
25 for the halyard, which is even better.)
But raising the sail still wasn’t fast. I
could halfway raise the sail by hand, then take some
turns around the winch and crank it the rest of the
way up, but it was a couple minute operation. In tacking,
I would set the autopilot to start the tack and then
lower the sail, which was now on the windward side.
Releasing the tack traveler first would allow it to
slide to the proper side for the new tack without
any pulling on the control lines, which also led to
the cockpit. Once down on deck, a length of shock
cord on the deck would be pulled over the sail and
then slip under a clip, to provide at least a temporary
tie down. Then the second sail would be raised. Total
time to tack, if everything went well, was 3.5 to
4 minutes. Repeated three to four times on a 95 degree
Gulf of Mexico summer afternoon, and I was pretty
much done for the day.
(When the rig was converted to balanced lug, I was
toying with another scheme for tacking. That would
leave the old sail up but shifting the sail tack on
the traveler when coming about. Then the new sail
would be raised behind the old sail, and then the
old sail lowered. It would guarantee better control
during the tack because a sail would always be up,
but I was concerned about chaff when the sail was
lowered while pressing against the mast.)
Reefing was another problem. Raising and lowering
the sail from the cockpit was of limited usefulness
if the sail couldn’t be reefed from the cockpit
as well. Obvious, reefing points along the leach of
the sail were handy to the cockpit for redoing the
clew, but I couldn’t figure out any workable
way to reef the tack from the cockpit. Any solution
would involve two lines for each sail (one for each
set of reef points), and have to work as the sail
tacks slid back and forth on the traveler.. So reefing
required a trip to the foredeck, but at least not
to the very top of the bow.
It is possible to tack and make progress with the
dipping lug on the wrong, or windward side, of the
mast, to save the work of moving the sail around the
mast or dropping one sail and raising the other. On
my boat, you could also haul the tack to the weather
rail to improve the shape. It works, but kills the
speed. I recall doing it once when we were doing 6
knots and I did a short tack without dipping. The
speed dropped to 3.5 knots with the sail on the wrong
side (and with the tack hauled to the high side),
and the boat felt like it was laboring. I have some
more thoughts about this, which we’ll get to
in a bit.
Bolger reported that on his June Bug rigged with
two dipping lugsails, tacking took no longer than
resheeting a genoa sail of about the same size, so
this is something worth trying on a smaller scale.
After a couple years on the 30-footer, the decision
was made to switch to a balanced lug, at least for
day and coastal sailing (which at the time was all
I was doing anyway).
About this time Bolger came out with a new scheme
for tacking a dipping lugger, using only one sail.
So not long after I had converted to a balanced lug,
I rerigged back to a dipping lug for a couple test
sails. The main change was Bolger ran a line up to
the masthead and then back to tie off on the yard
at a point about halfway between the mast and the
aft end – sort of a topping lift for the yard.
One function was the same as the downhaul line I used;
to tame the yard’s noggin’ knocking tendencies
when raising or lowering the sail. (In my experience,
the downhaul works better than the topping lift because
it also tends to tame the swinging back and forth
of the yard. There’s also no chance a downhaul
that doesn’t run to the masthead will ever jam
at the masthead.) The second purpose was to allow
the dipping lug to be tacked without completely lowering
the sail.
The idea was the yard topping lift would be set
so when the sail was lowered, the lift would support
the yard just before the forward end touched the deck.
It would also hang naturally on the aft side of the
mast. Tack lines would be rigged so the tack could
be hauled around behind the mast and to its new position,
and then the sail raised again, with the yard naturally
following the tack to the new leeward side. I had
hopes this could cut the tacking time – and
labor – in half. Not to mention the reduced
clutter from having only one large sail, instead of
two, on deck of a rather small boat. Well, it worked,
but not as smoothly as I hoped. My typical tacking
time, without unusual glitches, was 3.5 to 4 minutes
– the same as the two-sail method. Part of the
problem was the design of the boat. The sloping forward
side of the cabin ended where the mast went through
the deck, created a tilted V-shape there. The sail
and the tack tended to jam when passing through that
constricted area, necessitating a trip forward to
clear things up. There was also just a lot of friction
inherent in hauling a heavy, partially-lowered, 385-square
foot sail from one side of the boat to the other.
I do think this idea has promise, perhaps on a boat
with a somewhat smaller and lighter sail, and with
a more streamlined deck design (and watching out for
miscellaneous cleats, hatch corners, or anything else
that could snag the sail.
For me, though, it was on to the balanced lug rig.
| LeDulcimer
with balanced lug |
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The conversion really was quite easy, mostly a matter
of building a boom long enough (about 20 feet) for
the foot of the sail, and adding a cleat low on the
mast for the boom downhaul. There was only one slight
glitch, The initial boom downhaul was set to keep
the sail in the same fore-and-aft location, or to
put it another way, to keep the same amount of sail
forward of the mast as there had been with the dipping
lug.
The balanced rig reached as well as the dipping
lug and not surprisingly ran better since the boom
held the foot of the sail out. But the boat was sluggish
hard on the wind, My attention engaged, I checked
Chapters 15 and 17, on. respectively, dipping and
balanced lugs, in Bolger’s book, 100 Small Boat
Rigs (since reissued as 103 Small Boat Rigs). The
drawings showed that the dipping lug rig had more
of the sail forward of the mast along the foot than
did the balanced lugger (there was no noticeable difference
on the yard). I slid the downhaul 12 to 18 inches
forward on the boom, and the windward performance
dramatically improved. In retrospect, I probably should
have done some more experimentation, but not being
terribly high-performance driven, I was happy with
what I had. During a later conversation with Chuck
Leinweber, another balanced lug enthusiast, he reported
that he had experimented with downhaul location and
had found there was a optimal spot, and further forward
or aft degraded speed. Obviously, moving the foot
of the sail aft increased the weather helm, but the
boat had come out with a near neutral helm when on
the wind, so the extra weather helm didn’t hurt.
Sometimes, you just gotta be lucky. The boat was sailed
with this configuration for about 15 years.
Here are some unscientific observations. My impression
is the dipping lug rig was both faster on the wind
and closer winded that the balanced lug, but I was
usually so busy handling the dipping rig, or so tired
after tacking it, that I never took careful compass
or speed readings. The one time I do recall checking
is when I experimented with carrying the sail on the
wrong side of the mast, and the boat was doing around
6 knots hard on the wind with the sail on the right
side. It has never equaled that speed hard on the
wind with the balanced lug. The balanced lug, with
fierce concentration at the helm and with the original
fin keel on the hull, could be made to tack in about
100 degrees; 110 was more usual. Reaching the speed
of the two rigs seemed to be about even (in 12 to
15 mph winds, 7 knots was common), and running the
balanced lug had the clear edge.
Against the more conventional sloops of the ubiquitous
cruisers and cruiser/racers that populate most marinas,
my impression over the years is most were slightly
closer winded and slightly faster on the wind. The
advantage swings my way as the sheets were eased and
none near my boat’s size could hold that balanced
lug downwind, unless they went to the trouble of flying
a spinnaker. Competing against out-and-out racers,
like a J-24, would be a different story, but by the
time I got around to doing that, I had changed the
keel and hadn’t worked out all the problems.
Even with them worked out, I would expect to be outperformed,
just as these boats will outperform the typical fiberglass
production boat. But the point here is efficiency.
The balanced lug gives one halyard to haul, and one
sheet to set. Tacking is merely throwing the tiller
over, and the rig is self vanging. It’s also
undeniably more efficient downwind than the modern
Bermuda rig, unless you go to the hassle of a spinnaker.
Twice in head to head sailing with conventional
sloops in gusty conditions an interesting phenomenon
was noticed. When a gust of wind would hit the boats,
both would increase their heel, but my boat with the
balanced lugsail would noticeably scoot ahead. The
most striking example was an impromptu race in St.
George Sound with a friend in her 36-foot ketch and
a another boat, identified by its sail as a Hunter
28, that wandered along and accepted our invitation
to join. The wind was moderate at the start, but then
died. It slowly filled from a new direction, until
by the last leg, which was a close reach, it was blowing
15-20 with higher gusts. In the light winds, the Hunter
and I left the ketch, which lacked adequate light
air sails, behind. I had a slight lead, but was unable
to shake the Hunter until we got to that last leg
and the new wind reached its full, gusty velocity.
Our speed remained the same, except when the gusts
hit, and then I would noticeably gain several yards.
By the time we finished, I was well ahead. My guess
is the efficient shape of the lugsail, along with
the lower height of the mast it allows, was responsible
for that result. (The mast on the 30-footer is about
28 feet above the waterline – about the same
height as for a 22 foot sloop. The mast on our 20
foot lugger is 17 feet and its 9 feet on the 11 foot
pram.)
I think the shorter mast itself is an advantage,
carrying less windage and heeling effect, leading
to the results mentioned above. (And in the typical
marina with towering aluminum spars, my stumpy wooden
mast is going to be the last one hit by lightning!)
Again, it’s a different way of looking at efficiency.
Draw a 28-foot (above the waterline) mast on the hull
of your choice and then try to get it to carry 385
square feet of sail with the conventional three sided
Bermudan sails.
Another difference with conventional boats is I
don’t have a bow pulpit. The lifelines angle
down to the bow are tied off to a securely bolted
padeye. The pulpit isn’t needed because there’s
no need to go to the bow to handle jibs. The only
time I go there is when docking (and after the boat
is already at the dock), anchoring which is usually
in calm waters, or to watch the bow slide through
the water in moderate conditions..
A common question about balanced lugs is whether
there is a noticeable performance difference with
the sail on the “bad” tack, on the mast’s
windward side and the sail presses aback on the mast.
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LeDulcimer
on the "bad" tack.
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Given my experience with the dipping lug on the
bad tack, I had expected some loss, but not as severe.
But after 15 years with the rig on three boats, I
can say any difference isn’t noticeable. Sometimes,
in fact, the GPS will indicate the bad tack is faster
than the good tack, and sometimes vice versa. My impression
is the sail sets flatter onthe “bad” tack
and hence does better in conditions that favor a flatter
sail (usually stronger winds). Conversely, it is fuller
on the good tack and does better in lighter winds,
or when extra power is needed to punch through s short
chop. I also think any difference to too small to
be measurable worth much worry..
Okay, remember I said we’d be coming back
to the experience with sailing with the dipping lug
on the wrong side of the mast? Well, now is the time.
See if you can deduce from what I learned when I switched
from the dipping to the balanced lug what might make
a dipping lug perform better on the “wrong”
side. This only sat unseen before my eyes for more
than a decade before the possible answer occurred
to me. Yep, when tacking from the good to the bad
tack, instead of just hauling the tack to the new
windward rail, also move it aft a couple feet or so.
Just like I had to shift foot of the sail aft with
the balanced lug, doing a similar thing on the dipping
lug might significantly improve performance. It would
also mean quite difference in weather helm from one
tack to the other. But it could allow short tacking
by only having to haul on a couple tack lines. The
idea would be to handle the sail like this in tight
quarters or when leaving an inlet or sound or for
a short daysail, and then set it properly when one
course will be sailed for a long time. I hope to test
this sometime.
This is a lot of words about dipping lugs, but there’s
a reason. With more and more people using balanced
and Chinese lugs, knowing about the dipping lug adds
a lot of redundant protection for your boat. Break
a yard? Jury rig the boom for the yard and rehoist
as a dipping lug. Break the boom? Remove it and sail
as a dipping lug. Break the mast? Step the boom as
a mast (and probably support it with some lines),
reef the sail appropriately, and rehoist as a dipping
lug. Think about how you would fasten the tack to
the deck, but with some thought it’s a perfectly
feasible jury rig for other lug rigs.
Okay, now for some more thoughts about balanced
lugs. One advantage in switching from the dipping
to the balanced rig was the single sail instead of
two, freeing up a lot of deck space. Secondly, it
became possible to rig up a jiffy reefing system that
could be operated from the cockpit.
This is rigged similar to jiffy reefing on a conventional
Bermudan main. A reefing line runs from the boom through
the clew or tack reefing cringle and back down to
a turning block on the boom (giving a 2:1 purchase).
The lines then run either forward (from the clew)
or aft (from the tack) through some eyestraps which
act as fairleads to turning blocks at the mast, and
then back to the cockpit. My turning blocks at the
mast are three sets of doubles (one for each set of
reefs in the main) and are simply tied to a cleat,
right at the downhaul. This latter point is important
because as the reef lines are hauled in, they became
the new downhaul. I use 3/8-inch, three-strand Dacron
rope for the reefing lines. The reefed sail also sets
several inches lower, so make sure there are no obstructions
on the deck.
To reef singlehanded, I ease the main (with the
boat being steered by the autopilot), until the front
of the sail luffs but the aft is still drawing. This
slows the boat, but keeps it moving and under control.
Next the halyard is eased – it’s easy
to mark it on how far to slack off for the first,
second, or third reef. The reefing lines are led to
line clutches and then to one of the trusty Barlow
20 winches. It seems to work best to first reef the
luff, then the leech. If this is the first reef, the
slack is taken up on other reef lines. Then the sail
is hoisted and resheeted.
Reefing, by the way, seems to flatten the sail,
which is good in strong winds. It also, as Jim Michalak
has noted, reduces the twist of the sail, which can
enhance windward performance.
It usually works pretty well, but there is a fair
amount of friction in the system and there are a lot
of lines meeting and crossing at the mast –
the tangle potential is high. The sail was first rigged
with only two reefs, but I wanted a third one, which
would be needed if winds hit 25 to 30. But adding
that third set of lines seemed to double or triple
the number of snags. As I said, it usually works,
but sometimes the tack lines can hang up, and it’s
very important to keep the lines sorted out at the
turning blocks at the mast base. (This system is overkill
on my smaller boats, although I do have turning blocks
and cleats at the front and back of the boom on the
114-square foot sail on the Frolic2.)
I did once try a system with one line for each set
of reef points. One line ran from clew reef up the
boom and through the tack reef, and then back along
the boom to the turning block and then to the cockpit.
It worked, but had too much friction to be reliable.
Since I reused the dipping lug sail on the 30-footer,
I’ve always carried it loose footed on the boom.
And usually when it’s reefed, I don’t
bother to tie in the reef points unless I’m
worried the sail is bunched in such a way that the
folds would fill and hold a significant amount of
water. The lack of tying in the points has never caused
a problem. I do use reef points on the smaller sails.
There are other ways to reef, especially on smaller
balanced lugs. Matt Layden on his line of small cruisers
dispenses with the boom downhaul. Instead, he has
a metal rod inserted into the center of the forward
end of the boom, and which curves around, sort of
like a question mark, to a flexible deck mount. That
allows the boom to be rotated and Matt can reef his
sail like a window blind. I’m not sure this
could be scaled up for a 385-square foot sail.
Another idea would be to mount a conventional jib
roller fuller system on the boom and use it to reef
the sail. I think I’d like to try that with
an inexpensive, used small system on one of the smaller
boats before venturing to try it on the 30-footer.
Roller furlers generally aren’t cheap!
Okay, those are my experiences. Here are some opinions
based on those experiences, but take them with a large
grain of salt. One is that on a dinghy and small boat,
I think a balanced lug is better than a Chinese lug
because it’s a simpler sail and is reputed to
have a better aerodynamic shape. Messing with the
long sheet, sheetlets and the full length battens
doesn’t seem worth it. Notwithstanding that
opinion, I was extremely impressed with Mike Mulcahy’s
recent Duckworks article
on making a polytarp Chinese lug and fully intend
to try it in a small size. (Like I said, it’s
only my opinion and I could very well be wrong!)
When you get to the size of sail on my 30-footer,
the Chinese lug picks up some significant advantages,
primarily it’s superior ease in reefing. I still
think I get a better shape with the balanced lug and
a simpler sail with no battens to break.
I also fully agree with Bolger and other designers
who observe if sailmakers put the research into lugsails
that they put into high tech Bermudan mains and jibs,
the sail would perform much better. In fact, I suspect
there would be no reason, except for the racing fanatics
who want the nth degree of windward speed and pointing
ability, to use the high-stress and expensive sloop
rig. The lug would be better for 99 percent of the
sailing we do.
My 30-footer recently has given some tantalizing
hints of the possibilities. As written elsewhere
in Duckworks, the original fin keel has been replaced
with an experimental wing keel, which had some teething
problems. It initially both slowed the boat and hurt
its pointing ability. Those have been worked out in
such a way that I can adjust the angle of attack of
the wings by swinging the keel up and down. Completely
unexpected by me, this apparently has a major impact
on performance. That effect was accidentally discovered
one day when I ran aground while exploring a channel
under power and while the keel was lowered to what
I through was the proper angle for the wings. Fortunately
for me, this proved one of the few times I haven’t
been able to power off after grounding. The keel was
raised a couple inches and much to my surprise boat
speed improved by about a third of a knot. About the
same time, I decided that some experimentation with
the boom downhaul location was warranted and it was
moved further forward. My impression on a couple subsequent
sails was windward speed was noticeably improved;
in fact one day the GPS recorded my best hard-on-the-wind
boat speed ever with the balanced rig, a sustained
6 mph or about 5.3 to 5.4 knots. And yes, the sail
was on the “bad” tack at the time.
Also surprising is on a couple of occasions while
working on tacking I was able to get the boat to tack
on 80 degrees. It went slowly so pinched, but I’m
amazed it could point that close at all. The speed
was much better on those days with 90-100 degree tacks.
Complete investigation of these apparent improvements
has been delayed by a nagging minor illness, a long
spate of outboard problems, and a busy schedule, not
to mention rotten weather (Florida has had a few weather
disturbances in the past couple years). But sooner
or later, I’ll do some real testing to follow
up on these promising leads.
I also intend to do some more experimenting with dipping
lugs, although not on the 30 footer. Most likely it
will be on our Piccup Pram, or maybe on a June Bug.
Using Dave Grey’s polytarp kits will take the
sting out of the expense of making two sails, and
I want to try my idea of shifting the tack aft on
the “bad” tack on a small, easily handled
platform.
And it would be nice to see that sweeping, lovely
curve of the dipping lug again, even on a smaller
scale.
Other articles by Gary Blankenship & Helen Snell:
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