18 square meters of sail, divided into 5 panels. Bottom 3 made of 150 grams rip stop soft Polyester, while top 2 fanned panels are 160 grams of hard Dacron sail cloth.
The boat goes like a bat out of hell, usually over 6 knots easily passing 7 and 8.
I went with barrel panel style, but got alarmed once I lay the sail onto the scaffolding. Camber was ridiculous! I hurried and reduced it by sewing long curved darts from luff to leech, resulting in a shelf foot look. This resulted in less camber than the planned 7 percent. This is a result of inflation, since the wind fills the whole panel, as it presses on the top and bottom it actually reduces the depth, gravity on the other hand will always result in a deeper camber....
It's simple my 7 percent came down to 6, since the scaffolding method is wrong, my camber was terrible going over 8 percent, so the barrel foot was born as I attempted to reduce it back to 7, which in reality resulted in 6 percent. Oh well.... I suppose boat building is simpler than junk rigging...
So, what have I learned? The scaffolding system shows deeper camber since it relies only on gravity, inflating the panel is the only way to truly measure camber!
What else??
The boat goes very well to windward! I'm very pleased, more tests and info later on, but it almost seems we are doing between 50 and 55, I can almost get my red ensign to fly dead aft, yet bearing away a touch adds lots of speed.
Cruising Greece at the moment, a couple days ago we were broad reaching in a funnel between Evia island and Andros, the boat was cooking, flying on a single reef, it was too much, I went to third reef! You know just ease the halyard and tighten the yard, boat slowed down to nothing, I switched on the GPS, well guess what? we're cruising at 8 to 9!!!
I truly believe there are no mistakes, yes in light winds she can be a dog, but in blow she goes like a Bentley.
Keep Junking, and Shunting
Balkan Shipyards