Zip the wooden Sunfish got a new sail, cut by our local sailmaker Hunter at Schurr Sails. We wanted a heritage feel to the sail and Hunter did a great job incorporating some of the vintage features into a modern sail with a fuller draft. The sail is awesome but the original daggerboard is tiny tiny and the rudder is also too small for this powerful sail. The Skipper spent a lot of time today in the 12-15 knot puffs going sideways and having to roll tack to stay out of irons. What we will do for medium wind days is build up another rudder with old style hardware that uses the newer blade size and shape, and use one of the newer daggerboards like the shadow or Barrington board, depends on which vintage we can get at a decent price. The original rudder, daggerboard and vintage North Sail from Canada will be used on light wind, ghosting days.
Dagger board comparison, old wooden style on the left at 30 inches, than old style daggerboard for fiberglass boats at 39 inches, shadow board at 39 inches and template of latest racing board at 44 inches. Not shown is the Barrington board, which is similar to Shadow but not as tapered on trailing edge.
Rudder comparison, old wooden boat style rudder is not too much smaller than the latest style rudder but you lose a lot of bite from that rounded lower edge.
Madison was the chase ship today, ZIp's much younger sister.
Do you have a contact for your sailmaker? I would like to do a larger Sunfish-size sail (original style, canvas-look in Dacron) for my Sailfish.
ReplyDeleteSchurr Sails Pensacola (850) 438-9354
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