Glide Rig: A Hybrid Rig for Rowing Sailboats

 

MUSTELID gliding along
Full Foresail - Roll Reefed Main - Driver

All I wanted was a tall ship

And a star to sail her by

  Through the night.

  Through the night!

-- Motherlode?

Glide Rig: A Hybrid Rig for Row/Sailboats

Why name a rig? Any technical description is a mouthful, and few people appreciate mansplaining. A good name is evocative, calling to mind traditional associations. Or suggestive, offering a clear clue to the nature of its subject.

Gaff Rig, for example, suggests the spar itself and the sail's quadrilateral shape follows. It evokes robust working sail standing against the gale. The more initiated might recall its ability to scandalize—dumping half its area in a sudden gust. They might recall peak and main halyards, running backstays, and the tack-to-peak creases that indicate a correct set.

So, here is a rig in search of a name...

But first, the mandatory get-in-the-door question from The Commitments: “'Oo are your influences??”

Phil Bolger (of course) observed that most of us aren't out to win a race or even do much sailing to windward if we have any choice in the matter. Outboards and engines mostly handle the windward hemi-circle, so why expend design effort, gear and $$$ on maximal windward ability? He accordingly started to offer simpler, cheaper rigs.

That got us thinking. For a rowing, mostly downwind sailboat, we want a long, slim hull. These  are easily driven but offer relatively low form stability. Ultra-shoal draft limits ballast stability. A snug, low-center-of-effort sail plan that is easily handled and reefed pairs perfectly.

On a row/sail craft, we primarily want the sailing rig to pull us down- or across the wind. Positioned well forward as a foresail—clear of a forward rowing cockpit—it should provide powerful lee helm and steady, balanced traction. For sailing upwind, however, the balance picture changes. We want the total CE moved aft to for weather-helm and good tacking.

Quadrilateral and spinnaker-like sails work, but don't transition easily between the two modes.

Enter Frederick Ljungström, inventor of Ljungström Rig a boomless, double Leg o' Mutton (LOM) triangular sail attached along a shared luff to a  rotating mast. Off-wind, it sets and handles much like roller-furling twin staysails, and like them, provides considerable upward lift.

Sailing into the wind, the sails are doubled, overlapping on the lee side and sheeted as one. This constitutes a half-reef, and a large aftward jump of its CE.

To reef, the mast rotates (we prefer righty-tighty, lefty-loosey), furling the sail snugly around the standing spar. No halyards, tack or clew downhauls, bunts, or nettles. Just roll it up and carry on! As a bonus, simple flat-cut LOMs furl tightly with minimal windage, forming conic sections similar to a Crab-Claw rig.

Since a slim hull cannot spread wide sheeting angles, we re-introduced booms along a loose foot. The result is a doubled variation of the Holopuni Quick-Rig (a great name!) which is similar to a setup offered on the SeaPearl 21.

Finally, three-masted junk schooners (e.g., CHINA CLOUD) inspired us with their fine control of their relatively low total CE, bow and stern maneuvers, and reduced area on each mast. Even on a smaller vessel (within reason), the advantages of multiple masts are striking.

Why Balance Matters When Rowing: Multiple sails give fine control over the balance of the helm. Especially when "motorsailing" (row AND sail), good balance leaves our hands free for the oars and reduces steering by stroke with ensuing fatigue. Even over a short haul, that makes a big difference! A driver - often set while rowing when the others are stowed - helps hold the bow up toward the wind. Where the bow want's to 'blow off' this is an asset.

A Problem on the Side—and a Solution

There is a catch with standard booms. They are fixed at the mast and sheeted toward their outboard end. As the sail is reefed, the clew moves inboard of the sheets, pulling laterally on the mid-boom, bending it toward the CE. Heavy spars and compromise arrangements are the usual fix.

Our solution? The Gliding Grommet.

We use a rope grommet that glides along a lightweight boom, with both the clew and sheets attached directly to it. A light clew/sheet outhaul is led through a turning block at boom's end, spreading the sail as desired.

When reefing, ease the outhaul, roller furl the sail as needed and make the outhaul fast. The grommet, clew and sheets are move inboard along the spar. The active, loaded portion of the boom automatically shortens, increasing relative strength. It absorbs the load purely in compression, avoiding mid-span bending stress. Cheap, DIY, and it works like a charm.

Glide Rig Specification

Mulling all this together, pulling out the main points and generalizing, we arrive at...

The "glide" emphasis is on downwind sailing and a strong balance shift for upwind sailing, supported by the working rig (I.e., without sail changes):

• Foresail in 'cat' position (well forward) and,
• Sets large area for off-wind sailing
• Reduces area and moves CE aft for upwind sailing
  
  
• Main near amidships and/or,
• Backs up the foresail for downwind sailing
• Becomes the driving upwind sail
  
  
• Driver well aft
• A smaller sail for balance and riding

"Glide" can be used adjectivally in the usual manner... where we would say "That's a junk schooner, ketch or yawl", we can say "That's a glide schooner, ketch or yawl" or combine them, "That's a glide junk schooner, ketch or yawl." 

Generally speaking, we wouldn't apply the glide adjective to schooners, ketches and yawls that don't pass drive from the foresail to main when switching from down to upwind sailing, and vice versa. Ditto cutters, sloops and catboats.

But any schooner, ketch or yawl is arguably a glide rig. It's a threshold, as is often the case. Boundaries are fuzzy and often the subject of over-heated tavern debate. Personally, I find it a simple matter of personal perspective... we each get one and to each their own.

With this in mind:

• Two- or three-masted schooner, ketch, and yawl variants may qualify.

• Main and driver with other planforms and rigging may qualify.

• Rig particulars—such as specific sail planforms, unstayed masts, roller furling, the Gliding Grommet solution, and such—are handy but optional.

NOTE: We call the stern sail a driver... it seemed the better option among mizzen (confusing), jigger (???), dandy (too high-brow?) and spanker (let's not go there).

MUSTELID's Glide Rig

I would now call MUSTELID's a three-masted glide LOM ketch rig. Fore and main sails are of equal height. LUTRA's main will be slightly taller (also quadrilateral with a sprit in the mix), so I'd call her a three masted glide hybrid schooner rig.

We tested Glide Rig extensively in MUSTELID over a wide range of conditions, as documented in the video series, MUSTELID Venture.

MUSTELID's foresail is a Ljungström sail (double LOM) rigged and positioned as described above.

Her midships main is a single LOM boomed as described and set aft of the forward cockpit. In this position, it becomes the heart of any windward sailing we might do, with the foresail reefed (moving the combined CE aft) and doubled over to sheet as an LOM. We offset this one to clear the BIRDWATCHER cabin's mid-line companionway.

We set a small LOM driver dead aft for offwind sailing, to 'crank in' weather helm, hold the bow up when drifting and serve as a riding sail. It is a big help when rowing in headwinds, especially when we must row at an angle to the wind. This sail was offset opposite the Main to clear the rudder and tiller. In this position, it can be squared across the transom for a mid-line, downwind push.

It is sprit-boomed in pretty much the standard manner. The boom is longer than usual, extending forward of the mast. A U-sheet leading forward attaches one leg to the inboard end of the boom and one to the outboard. This gives us leverage to trim and make fast. The sail is fixed to the mast (no halyard)... to stow, we release the snotter and raise the outboard end of the boom alongside the mast. A light line fixed to the masthead is used to wrap and secure the boom and vertical, hand-rolled bunt of the sail.

Roll yer own and glide on, Friends!

LUTRA Launched!

 

Floating high!

LUTRA - Genus name of river and sea otters of the family Mustelidae.

LUTRA Launched!

You'd think it would be getting easier with experience. Not sure it's gotten any harder, but it takes longer than we think and leaves us elated, but whupped each time.

Building one's own vessel - DIY - is a mixed bag. 

On the one hand, it's a long sequence of tasks presenting varying degrees of challenge. Learning curves, supply chain foibles and material quirks, domestic and social duties and distractions... even - or especially - weather all conspire to prolong the ordeal.

On the other, we get exactly what we've dreamed and crafted into being, with a tailored fit no production vessel can match, and the care and attention no professional can afford.

A dream, a plan, a few tools, a pile of materials, skills acquired along the way, and stubborn persistence are all that are required.

And time. LUTRA has about 4 months of work in her for the two of us amateurs. Extend to about 6 1/2 months accounting for the copper plate - including stripping it off WAYWARD and some wasted time learning to translate 2D angle to 3D. Extend to 21 months accounting for all those detours I mentioned on the one hand.

We took a bit longer than necessary to launch her. Each boat is different, and when possible, we like to launch her by ourselves using tools we carry and materials that can be found anywhere in our cruising grounds. This time, we were mostly successful on both counts, but kind friends had to be dissuaded from lending their time and heavy machinery. We look kinda Luddite to most, but we have to be able to handle a potential move out there, and on our own. So we grunted and groaned our way to the water in only three days.

There's work left to go.

We'll spend the next month finishing out the interior, building a rocket stove and moving aboard. Then off to find spars a few miles from Tenakee. Then a few more miles to rig her. But it's now on our own time, and afloat.

The archipelago awaits!

First kiss o' the Sea

Tender time
Photo by Beret Barnes

Towed by Friends
Photo by Darcie Ziel

Guest Post: MARY H by Chris George

 

MARY H
All photos supplied by Chris George

Lord, it was day and night and night an day work when in season!

- Some Old Salt

MARY H
  Guest Post by Chris George

In 2022 Massachusetts announced a small business grant for Green Innovation and Climate Resiliency in the commercial seafood sector. I won the grant and built a scow for my shellfish farm. Having read the Triloboat Blog for years, I had formed the idea that a sailing scow could be useful. The book Trade Winds by Christiaan de Beukelaer implanted the idea of using sail, and maybe electric, to power my work on the farm for climate reasons. The idea was born and I received $25,000 to build and work the boat. She is named the MARY H, after my wife, and her mission is to carry and deploy aquaculture gear and pick up oyster and quahog seed and drop off harvests to a hatchery facility about one mile away across part of Cape Cod Bay.

The design already existed in Howard I. Chapelle’s classic American Small Sailing Craft as the Cape Cod Bay Pound-Net Scow. In the old sailing days, these boats mainly fished herring - and fished the species out! They look like the TRILOBOAT StudyPLAN SANDBOX, but evolved slightly curved sheer lines helping with the “roll to the sea, as there often is on the Cape shore” and historically carried a pile driver. I sent to the office of ship plans at the Smithsonian and for $60 they sent me a tube full of diagrams of old scows -including Great Lakes types - along with Chapelle’s lines, taken off in Provincetown in the 1940s. To start I had Dave’s blog, Chapelle’s book and an awesome picture I found on the internet of a model built locally off the same plan, credit Rob Napier. 

The original boat in the plan is 36’ and I determined for the scope of the project, and town mooring regulations, to scale the build to 20’ - though I did wonder if proportions would get weird later on. So off this poster-sized plan I made a table in my notebook with an engineering ruler and scaled all the points of measurement for 20’. I also set about making an 8’ mock up with a couple scrap veneer plywood sheets and a cardboard model. Making the model was fun just tracing the plan onto cardboard and adding a chopstick mast and paper sails; at that size my old G.I. Joes look like a person of 5’4’’ height. 

To build the boat I had written some pay into the funding to hire skilled help. I hired a friend of mine, a retired roofer and now bricolage artist with whom I had already worked on a few building projects. The first thing we did was to locate a tree for the mast and let it cure for about a year. It’s a beautiful mast! We found a very straight white pine of about 24’ in the woods on a neighbor’s property. Stripped it with a machete (held like a spoke shave) and then coated it with wood preservative and hung it in my garage. 

Severely squeezed into my garage, the actual assembly and building went straight down the lines of “Instant Boats.” Dynamite Payson virtually dictated the techniques that I would modify. Cutting out the main pieces from plywood was most of the early work. I referred to the notebook table a lot and because the math was simpler to convert inches in decimal (remember the engineering ruler), I made sure to make an extra column for the conversion back to 1/16th inches for my measurements on plywood, transcribing the height of the sheer above bottom. The one caveat is that this measurement required another column in the table because the Pythagorean theorem had to be applied to account for the flare of the hull as the Chapelle plan just shows a profile view. No lofting though! A Kreg brand T-square was used constantly. I made a useful misstep while building the mockup that helped me realize to account for flare because I paid a printer to just proportionally enlarge the plan and I used it like a template. When assembling the mockup (which I may still employ as a standup paddleboard) using stitch and glue with zip ties, it felt scrunched down. This effect was not noticeable at the tiny size of the model. The actual cross section of MARY H is 5’ across the bottom with a 5’6’’ beam on deck. 

The winter months were spent in the garage with a space heater cutting and edge joining the plywood with epoxy and fiberglass. The gunwales were constructed in this way as well as five transverse bulkheads for holding the structure together like a ladder. Striking the fair curve of the bow and stern were the most ancient and nautical feeling part of the process. It was accomplished by laying the measurements on the plywood with nails and bending a piece of PVC edging around them. The curve was hand cut by eye with a buzz saw through the skill of my roofer friend. 

Building a boat was a lot to ask of my family, three children and one an infant. I did a lot of work after bedtime into the night and tried to involve the children as much as possible. One problem spot occurred while attaching the bottom to the sides for tape and glue. We decided to attach the bottom with the boat upright, bending the kerfed bow and stern up with shims and two-by-fours at both ends. The shape of the boat would be held in place for gluing with bar clamps and screws edgewise above the waterline. The deadflat was easy enough and all joints were bonded with epoxy fillets and fiberglass strips. But the ends had to be done in one fell swoop laboriously levering up the ends of the boat like flaps over the piles of shims while running around to make everything even as sealant set between the seams. We went way over time and things were starting to fail as my wife pulled in with all the kids. Seeing them all it was such a sacrifice not to be able to care for my baby at that time. But I left it in the care of my friend and somehow he finished the bottom single handedly. 

With the hull still upright I built the centerboard box up out of clear pine boards and more marine plywood, splurging on bronze screws. Now looking boatlike, I got a group of friends together to help flip the hull over onto its transoms for sheathing the bottom. All were promised fresh clams or oysters. I sheathed the entire hull on the outside only with one layer of thick fiberglass cloth bedded in epoxy. Once painted the same crew helped me flip the boat again onto a trailer which I picked up reasonably from the USACOE via the GSA, a good resource. The garage doors were popped off the hinges and the boat was carried out by hand. I had lined the trailer with an old foam mattress that I saved for this purpose so she would have a soft landing onto the rollers. 

Outside in the Spring I built deck stringers out of clear pine strapping and built the mast step of extra fir from the skeg. The boat was filled with 100 empty soda bottles for buoyancy with some sealed plastic water cooler carboys for good measure. The deck was cut from the same ½’’ marine plywood as the rest of the boat and laid as efficiently as I could manage. Between every seam I shot marine sealant or sometimes silicone caulk. A somewhat big mistake was not better sheathing the deck somehow because it leaks during rains. It has to be pumped out after rain and storms now while on the mooring. The hull is tight however so the water inside is “fresh.” One splurge was for EVA foam faux wood decking. Rolls of this stuff were moderately expensive but are a big facet of the historical look, and napably soft. Many people have stopped by the boat and remarked they thought these were actual planks. Rub rails are made of super cheap highly sacrificial lengths of furring strip.

Rigging is piecemeal. I got about 100’ each of tan synthetic rope for the halyards and great thick faux hemp nylon rope for the main sheet, also a historical touch. I made a forestay with hardware store steel wire and shackles. Chafing gear is cut garden hose. The sail was made at a sailmaker in Falmouth, Massachusetts. The proportions are kind of weird as the boom is a real deck sweeper. It will help to reef when I sail the boat more in earnest. At this point she sailed down wind, in the lightest winds three times in the Summer and Fall of 2025. Yet, when I put the sail up, down wind, in the lightest wind, it is still hard to deny we are under sail. And that feels great! I am looking at a potentially life long learning curve so there is plenty of time to perfect it. For electric propulsion she hangs two five horsepower German Torqeedo engines off the stern with some Chinese ePropulsion stick engines for backup.

MARY H now sits on the hard waiting for the 2026 season coming up at the end of March. All the people who helped were essential: a landowner letting us search for the mast, friends and relatives who flipped the boat or shot screws or gave friendly advice, authors - I owe them all a ride or at least some oysters. Spiritually, there have been few journeys as rewarding for me as building this boat. At the Christening, the bottle was smashed by the real Mary H.

Expenses

Dave, here. Chris provided his cost accounting under the grant in response to requests in the comment section. His itemized list can be read HERE. Please click on the spreadsheet image for a more legible pop-up.

The Shed of Damocles

 

Accident waiting to happen

Every avalanche begins with a single snowflake;
 And my hope is to move a snowflake.

- Thomas Frey

The Shed of Damocles

Well. Our latest boat project has been idling for close to five months now... stalled on account of weather. Last year we were able to work through the winter for the most part, however inefficiently. Summer was unusually wet and cool. This winter, early and hard.

Sigh.

We were soooo close to finished when November of 2025 froze our bones in sub-freezing temps. and dumped three feet of snow on us. The fixed mill site (the building behind our tarp shed) had never let go its snow before, and we were content to believe it never would. Ordinarily, we'd go up and shovel it, but the roof is old and thin in places... if we can't see where to step, we could punch through. Even if not, we'd open up a hundred leaks we couldn't fix until clear and dry.

Our light tarp structure  is pitched steeply for the duration by lowering it's street-side posts. It can stand a deal of powder snow... maybe as much as a foot? We don't want to test its extremes, so clear it once or twice a day, avoiding any more than about 6in. More often if it's wet, since waterlogged snow is 10x as heavy.

Since it's not steep enough to shed snow, the procedure is as follows: 

• Throughout this process, shovel away past the outer, lower edge of the tarp to clear a space for snow coming down. If not, it stacks up and blocks it from shedding off the tarp.

1. Make a pass along the lower edge, shouldering upward to shake the bottom 1/4 or so down and off the tarp.
2. Use a smoothed T-pole to prod and shake the underside from the solid eaves down, shaking the top 1/2 down toward the bottom 1/2.
3. Go outside, and drag that lower 1/2 of snow down and off the roof, shaking the last remnants. 

This takes from 20 minutes to about an hour of hard work depending on depth, how dry, damp or wet the snow is, and how much snow is built up along the bottom. Past a certain depth, we have to move it toward either end of the 40ft span, or fling it across the 10ft road. 

Huff. Puff. Ain't as young as we used to be. I won't go into shoveling along town, houses we're watching, our boats and those we're watching or are unattended. But there ya go.

Eventually, there came cycles of thaw and rain and freeze in quick succession. The snow compacted and melted a bit, but formed an icy underbelly.

Finally, it blew a balmy 45degF winds through the open shop, melting the interface between ice and metal roof. The unmelted portion - a foot or so of ice and snow - was happy to ski downhill and onto our shed, wreaking a degree of mayhem; tearing our tarp and breaking a few rafters.

It warmed further, and we fixed out rafters and added the double layers of the blue tarp you see. They're water resistant, but are not as slick as the polyethylene underlayer. A little harder to clear.

But the warmth was transient... temps plummeted and the snow came again, building to back to its previous level, as shown in the lead pic. 

It's raining, again, with cold in the forecast. That upper roof might melt away without dumping, this time... certainly no ice along the bottom layer to sled it down. Who knows what the next cold spell will bring.

Five months lost so far... that's enough to build the boat in ideal conditions, all found.

Wah.

Yet, we grow stronger with every shovelful. We rest between pushes of effort, catching up on chores deferred and reading. It's a time to come together with friends for feast and laughter.

And oh, the winter-time is beautiful! The skies are glorious - furrowed in the laden cloud, or bright with crystal blue, or dancing auroral against the distant stars flung above the peaks. Snow flocks bush and tree and languishes in sensual curve and hollow. Frost feathers and heaves. Fog, frozen to ice mirrors from every branch. Our cheeks our ruddy and our breath smokes on the frigid air. Lovely!

But still... spring-time, anyone?

Memory Lane - Lover's Lane

 

The Good Samaritan
A memorable moment between strangers
by Stephen Sawyer

To Love. 
  To friends, to lovers or both.
      May we all experience it in abundance.

-- Claire Kingsley

Eventually you love people - friends or lovers - because of their flaws.

-- Karen Allen

Memory Lane - Lover's Lane

Memory Lane and Lover's Lane often run together.

Soulmates are seldom singular. They come to us as romantic Lovers, as Family and Friends. Even with Passing Strangers, we often share a glance, an event or a moment which lingers in the mind and heart across the span of years.

Memory is composed of moments of passion. Moments that stand out against a backdrop of routine and day to day concerns. Exceptional moments of hot and cold, peace and agitation, ugliness and beauty, love and loneliness imprint themselves upon us. Are drawn into the story of our selves.

So? My wish for Self and Others??

Let us fill our cup with love, wherever we find it. Turn toward those who bring love in each of the moments Life brings us. Seek it out in others along the way. Turn toward laughter and delight over those things we share. The antics of youth, bread broken together, a cup o' kindness tipped. We have more in common than not. 

Turn away from fear, from anger and despair. I don't mean suppress it, but rather reframe it. Resist, where need be, with the council of Gandhi, who with his friends overcame the greatest empire of their day: Seek out and appeal to the best in those you must oppose. They, too, are human beings, struggling to come to terms with a complex world.

Let us run our lanes together - Memory and Love - to the best of our ability. Build a life of memory, lined with love.

Let us find soulmates at every turn.

In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

-- From School Prayer by Diane Ackerman

Live Aboard MacroEconomics: A Case Study

 

WAYWARD earning her keep

As you live your life aboard a vessel, be aware of the sea of life on which it floats and on which it moves forward.

— Ian Gardner (as remembered)

Whatever floats your boat!

-- Sailorspeak

Live Aboard MacroEconomics: A Case Study

LUTRA, the boat we're currently building, offers an as-of-today set of numbers to puzzle over.

Numbers, of course, are slippery li'l devils. What counts in or out? Round up or down? Will the future hold the course? Nonetheless, it's worth a look! Here, I'll take a bird's eye look at up-front dollar costs of our live-aboard vessel relative to rent. 

So LUTRA. Our labor is 'free' (ha!). Time is probably about 6 months of steady, optimal workdays... spread across a year and a quarter in our actual context. Let's say 3000 person-hours (2 persons x 8 hours/day x 180 days, rounded up). The time investment itself hurts less than time lost cruising at large!

When all the dust settles, we arrive at two figures for her out-of-pocket cost. For building site, construction and materials of the hull and furnishings, around $5K is pretty close. Mind you, this is still semi-remote, so costs are high. That's the easy part.

Where it gets complicated is in evaluating outfit, gear and copper we're carrying forward from WAYWARD (and earlier boats!). 

WAYWARD's copper plate was originally a whopping $10K in 2014 dollars. We figure that it paid for itself in about 5 years, saving a rugged alternative finish (e.g., fiberglass/resin), anti-fouling paint, haul-outs and associated costs, repairs, on-board insurance, etc.. After 10 years aboard WW, we used half of it and her chine angles for LUTRA.  Each half is worth around $4K as #2 scrap in 2025 dollars defraying the original outlay.

Similar calculations go for anchors, chain and rode, a pile of fasteners, piano hinges, coms, nav lights and other gear.

So... um.... I'm going to say $1K for these components. Neither replacement value nor market value, but a nod toward what might have been an expensive heap if it hadn't already paid for itself. 

That brings LUTRA's up-front dollar cost to ~$6K.

We're building in our home port of Tenakee, Alaska. Currently, property is well out of our reach. Rents are running around $1K/month for a studio-ish space, utilities included. IF you can find one open. There are only a handful and chronically occupied.  In a larger town, such as Juneau or Sitka, low-end rents average $2K - $2.5K/month, utilities NOT generally included. Tight there, too, but there're generally more openings coming and going.

So let's start with our local $1K/month. That's $12K per year. LUTRA's build is paid off in 6 months at large, a little more when tied to the dock. If we live-aboard for 10 years, we clear 'savings' - in dollars not spent - of more than $100K in village rent, ~$200K in town rent!

Cash money, unfortunately, doesn't grow on trees. 

Tenakee labor is compensated at $18 - $25/hour. It's not exactly 40 hour work weeks, so can also stretch wider over time. But let's say 200 person-hours ($5K x 1 person-hour/$25) to earn the $5K cash outlay for LUTRA. Let's add to that our 3K person-hours for construction and round up for a conservative 3.5K person-hours.

Still, it's easy to see that 10 years of rent would require at least 4K person-hours at present rates.

So... well, well!... looks like we save time, too, even when calculating the bare rental alternative to living aboard. An even better dollar deal if we had bought a vessel, rather than DIY.

That being said, while DIY construction plays a role in all this there are middle grounds.

Buying a modest fixer-upper and DIY from there will (most likely) drop your time investment considerably, and quite possibly your layout costs, so give that a good look.

But the big money is in living aboard! Sail away from the dock if you can.

***

In reality, all of this is vastly more complicated. We don't begin to examine, here, the costs of gainful employment (commutes, clothing, peer outings, etc. inherent in the alternative). We haven't calculated equity and resale value vs. zero for rentals. We don't know how to count our time entangled in town while building. We haven't considered costs of maintenance and repair. We don't know how to evaluate what we learn while building, and how that pro-rates over the years. We don't know if we'll get that 10 years ahead, much less the 20 or so we have fair reason to hope for.

We keep in mind that, at the end of ten years, we still own our vessel  / home ; it's just another rent-due month for the alternative.

I started this post musing in print. I'm pleased to see that the numbers appear to crunch in our favor in both money (I was pretty sure) and time (surprise!). My sense is that, given a simple, low-overhead lifestyle, living aboard and sailing remote, the numbers tilt even further in our favor.

So don't let a little thing like money stop ya!

Rigged for Success: LOM/Ljungstrom + Quick-Rig Booms

 

MUSTELID's LOM Main and Ljungstrom Foresail

Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.

-- Rumi

Rigged for Success: 
    LOM/Ljungstrom + Quick-Rig Booms

I'd like to share a suite of ideas toward a family of lesser known rigs for smaller vessels that I think show a great deal of promise. Part historical, part convergent evolution, part innovation, the result is a simple but versatile, robust rig that can be DIYed at low cost.

Leg o' Mutton (LOM) Sails

This tasty moniker simply means a triangular sail. They're commonly used for headsails (jibs, staysails, etc.), mains (often called Bermudan sails) and drivers (small sails set far aft).

Ljungstrom Rig (2 x LOM)

Ljungstrom Rig uses a pair of LOMs, joined along their luffs and set on a free-standing, rotating mast. No booms were used to avoid troublesome impacts with crew.

This configuration works similar to twin head sails off the wind. From a beam reach on up, the sails are doubled over to one side and sheeted as one.

Pros:

• Boomstrike is eliminated (the rig's original focus).
• Light, inexpensive spares and gear.
• Quick set/reef, roller un/furling via the mast.
• Sailing off-wind, one side can be jibed for 'instant' 50% reef.
• Sail area aloft catches higher, upper wind-flows.
• Low Center of Effort (CE).
• Twin sails tend to center down the wind.
• Potential for hands-free operation.
• Sail steering is straightforward (haul to the side you wish to sail).
• UV resistant fabric along luff and foot eliminate sail covers.
• At least in smaller vessels, the furled rig is easy to set and strike, and compact for storage.
  
  

Cons:

• Lack of a boom makes spreading sail difficult (especially on narrow hulls).
• No clew outhaul or vang options.
• In contrast to twin stays'ls (unless the mast is canted) it generates no bow lift.
  
  

Adding a Boom

The addition of a boom set under a loose-footed LOM allows spreading, a clew out-haul and vang, addressing the main cons.

Interestingly, this approach was taken by both the Sea Pearl 21 (adventurously sailed by Stephen and Ginny Ladd, among others), and is marketed as Holopuni Quick-Rig (by Holopuni Canoes). Convergent evolution?

Both of these designs lead their clew outhauls via track along the top of the boom and sheets to the end of the boom. When the sail is reefed, the upward pull of the clew at mid-boom is resisted by the end positioned on the mast and the downward pull of the sheets at boom's end. 

As a sail's belly is blown full, pulling the clew strongly toward the tack, the boom resists in compression. If it is deflected from straight by the perpendicular pull of the clew between mast and sheet lands, that strength plummets. Usual solution? A heavy boom or one made with expensive, exotic materials.

Hmm.

What if we oppose sheet and clew tensions by having them meet at the same point? They cancel out, unloading the mid-boom! The clew outhaul - led to boom's end, then turned back toward the mast to the clew completes the picture. A rope grommet - travelling along the boom - is the perfect attachment point... simple, cheap and DIY.

Principle parts of the rigging...
This platform and 'collar' are primitive but functional

How We Go About It

Rotating Mast and Gear

In our small-ish boats, we went with a thumb-sized dowel protruding from the rounded bottom of the mast. This is inserted into a hole in its step - a fixed plate of thick HMD (cutting board plastic). This secures the foot but it allows it to rotate with very little friction. The upper partners are simply a loose-fit, fixed square around the mast. The distance between step and partners should be between 10% (minimum) and 15+% (healthy) of the mast's overall length for adequate cantilever.

A gate can swivel open to free one face for raising/lowering or close and lock to contain it. 'Box' sides at the step hold the foot in place for lowering. A pin led through one side and into a corresponding hole in the lower mast prevents rotation against high winds or rock and roll.

Each boom requires an arrangement that fixes their height above the partners, yet allows the mast to rotate independently. 

Our solution is a platform affixed to the mast with a collar from boom's mast end, around the mast, set above the platform... the collar is not so loose as to slip below the platform, but not so tight as to grip the mast.

Booms

Booms can be quite light as compression span decreases as the sail is reefed, and diameter per unit of span increases - functionally speaking, reefing makes them stronger. Further, they are subject to no significant side forces along that span. Sea trials help settle in on a light boom with comfortable margins of safety.

Each boom has a rope grommet loosely fit around it (sized so it doesn't bind when pulled at a flat angle). 

We fix a pinch cleat for the clew outhaul at the boom's mast end, pinch horn down (10deg) toward the distal end. This allows the line to ride over the non-pinch horn (up and toward the mast), under control hands-free as it pays out while furling.

A ring seized to the distal end of the boom turns the outhaul back toward the grommet.

The outhaul leads from its cleat, through the grommet (helps control a slack outhaul) to the turning ring, and back to the grommet. We fix it to the grommet's upper side, allowing a tail which is tied to the clew. We prefer little play between clew and grommet.

The sheet is fixed to the grommet's lower side and led to deck level. A turning device (multiple or travelling for an improved lead?) leads it toward a clear, handy to the crew. We prefer enough friction on the cleat to hold in steady wind but ease in heavy gusts... no lock hitch.

Sails

We used light nylon fabric to build flat-cut sails. These are responsive, and furl neatly around the slightly tapered masts. They are stretchy enough to take on some belly (camber) when full of wind.

Downside is that camber can't be flattened easily in high winds. But reefing is so easy, we can reduce power that way.

For 2xLOMs we screwed the webbed luffs to the mast, but are now considering a pocket for easier installation and removal. Others have found that a simple lanyard from tack to mast is sufficient for furling.

Handling the Ljungstrom

We set the Ljungstrom sail well forward, where it can pull us bow down the wind. 

We don't typically vang our sails to flatten them. Instead, we vary the sheet leads and/or reef a little more than we might. This avoids extra gear, handling and the heavier booms required. Personal call, however. 

Furled Set Up

When furled, the sail is snugly wrapped around the mast. The boom(s), if any, are vertical. Sheets are left slack and hanging. One clew outhaul is marline-hitched once or twice along the mast, securing all the bits, then made fast at its pinch cleat (low).


Setting Sail

Unhitch the outhaul, then refasten to its cleat. Uncoil sheets and lead aft to their cleats. Both outhaul and sheets will go slack as the sail is unrolled. Unpin mast if locked.

Depending on wind, you might wish to round up. For downwind departures, you may have to work in stages, trimming sheets as you go.

Unroll the sail by rotating the mast (we prefer 'righty-tighty; lefty-loosey' as standard... we do this by hand, but various rope windings are possible).

Once unfurled as far as desired, haul the outhaul(s) for the curve you wish, then make fast. Trim sheets and fall off to heading. Backing sail is easy and effective. If you wish to open the sails, do so.

On the Wind

Here the sails are overlapped and are sheeted as one (outer one generally the focus of our attention). They handle pretty much as any boomed LOM.

Off the Wind

Sailing off the wind, the sail is typically balanced like a delta kite. All things being equal, it want s to hold the bow centered downwind. More belly is often a good trade-off against more area.

To steer using sail, haul the sheet on the side toward which you wish to turn (easy, now!). This shortens its force vector and directs it to that side. The opposite sail, now relatively stronger and with a longer lever-arm, works to rotate the hull that-away. Like the reins of a horse!

In a heavy gust, you have a 50% reef at hand. You can jibe one sail (lapping one over the other) or let it fly (this can be harder to retrieve... get a wide angle). But if this comes up, consider roller reefing ASAP. Consider that, in high winds, you don't have to set them wing and wing... they sail well as one.

Odd Situations

If a sudden squall has invited letting both sails fly (they're trailing down the wind from the bow), calmly roller reef until you can bring them in and under control.

If such a situation has reversed their usual sides, don't panic... just hand the sheets around the mast, or refasten them for a fair lead and carry on. The sails won't care.

The whole mast, sails and all, can be furled, hitched up and let over as a sea-anchor.

All in All

We found these LOM/Ljungstrom + Quick-Rig Booms to be simple, cheap, versatile and powerful. Each piece is DIY-able from scavenged materials. Nothing about them couldn't be made in the field, at a pinch.

The lightness of the spars is a BIG advantage, especially as we age. The masts should be manageable for as long as we're likely to be able to row.

In researching the history of the rig, the few who have used it are soberly impressed by its virtues. It is not the fastest rig out there, but its no slouch, and pays its way with easy handling and quick reefing.

I'm hoping to see more of these on the water in the coming years!

Full Ljungstrom / Reefed LOM
Sprit-Boomed LOM Aft

References

Sea Pearl 21 Review by Josh Colvin

About Holopuni Canoes by Nick Beck

Rigging MUSTELID and MUSTELID Voyage by Anke and Dave