Hi Bill,

Sorry about the slow reply. The sail works well. This is the exact same sail.

The sail is designed to work with either a loose footed setup with a stiff boom. Or a laced foot with a lighter boom.

If your boom is stiff then you can choose how to set the sail. The loose foot is better for performance in general.

If the boom is lighter and more flexible then the load along the foot needs to be spread out by a lacing.

Loose footed it is best just to have depth in the foot of the sail – a little loose

If lacing – do the end attachments first to get the tension required. Then do the lacing after.

The idea is that the extra curve of the cloth is pushed straight and the extra sail area is pushed into the body of the sail to give the sail depth there.

In the head of the sail that ties along the yard, there is almost 6inches of curve that is also pushed straight.

I will send you a direct copy of this by email.

Michael

Thank you for your reply. I can see that my mast (9 feet 9 inches) will be too short for the Oz sail. Too bad, I would like to have tried it. Thanks again!

Hi Donna,

The centreboard of the Snark Sunchaser is around 200mm further forward than the one on the OzGoose and OzRacer RV. However both of these boats have a second mast position 186mm closer to the centreboard and they work OK in that position.

By working OK I mean that with the flat bow of the Goose and OzRacer you need a very neutral helm to enable steering around the biggest wave crests when racing. But with the mast in the aft position there is a little weather helm making it a little harder to steer a few degrees downwind to avoid wave crests.

The pointy bow of the Snark would mean that you are unlikely to need to steer down and the weather helm would work OK.

The other thing is that the mast height above the deck for the Oz sail is 3700mm.

The halyard block or eye position on the mast would be about 50mm below that. There would be no need to trim the mast above that … so if the Snark mast is longer above deck (I think it is) it won’t need to be trimmed … just a small fitting on the back of the mast at that point.

Hope that helps

Michael

Thanks Michael,

After some wishywashying, I have decided to just use a spritsail of small dimension as Chapelle shows on his chandlery Whitehall of that size. I wanted to run more sail, but as you said the Whitehall is tender. That’s okay, she’s a beautiful rower with an auxiliary sail.
Thanks again,
Nick

I think the GIS and Oz sails will be too big for the Whitehall. The normal whitehall hullshape doesn’t have a lot of stability. I think if you chose an Oz sail, the sail would have to have one or two reefs in most of the time.

This is also a characteristic of most good rowing boats and canoes. They give up stability to reduce drag so they can achieve good speeds rowing.

Michael

Hi Jimmy,

Edna asked me to look at your info.

I looked at the online page for the Nova Scotian. I don’t think any of our sails will be suitable.

The two big sails are too large and the canoe sail is too small to move the Dory along well.

Sorry about that. But thanks for checking with us!

Best wishes
Michael Storer

Thanks,
Jimmy

Thanks for the feedback.

John

Hi John,

I think that none of our sails really suit the El Toro at this stage. The normal sail area of the boat is 50 square feet. A lug rig often means you can carry a bit more sail as the sail is quite simple to reef.

However with the normal El Toro sail at 50 square feet our canoe sail at 36 or the oz sail at 89 are just too far away from the normal range.

Edna

Thanks

Hi Alex,

The GIS halyard point is 4380mm above deck. The sides of the boat come up 200mm higher than the deck, but are low enough to not interfere with the boom’s range of movement.

Michael.