One more day of Christmas over-indulgence tomorrow and then maybe we'll get back to more normal, I hope.

There have been some interesting thoughts on my question, and I'm glad to see that my 'alternative' idea has also appeared, but first let me try to clear up come confusion I seem to have started with the Amiina Mk1 and Mk2 rigs.

Edward got the boat in a run down condition and ideal for a conversion. We had the sail diagram from sailboatdata.com, but the sail area was based on 100% foretrangle and not 'real' sails. When we asked around we found that the sailmakers and racing boys were not prepared to divulge their 'secret' numbers, so we approached the Van de Stadt design who told us over the 'phone that the full fore and aft rig was 220 sq.ft. so I drew up the rig and wrote the instructions for a professional sailmaker to build the sail at that size. The boat sailed well but seemed tender, over-canvassed and had to be reefed early.

The big shock came when the handicap for the Round the Island Race handicap turned out at 0.833, similar to an Elizabethan 30, and faster than the Contessa 26 and even a Hunter Sonata. Something was obviously wrong. Even so, with that handicap and in the first attempt we came 305 out of 681 to finish and reefed down quite a lot of the time, and in the top half of the fleet.

The handicappers will not give out their formulae so we had a search until we got our hands on the IOR rating certificate of another Splinter, and found the sail area was only around175 sq.ft. The following year Amiina sailed with the bottom panel permanently reefed, and the handicap improved to 0.786. Of course the weather did not play ball and none of the smaller boats completed the race.

The next year the bottom panel was reinstated and the top panel was removed, so only the 5 parallelogram panels were used. And yes, the rig did not exactly look pretty being squat and square. With this low aspect ratio rig they came 188 in a fleet of 701 boats, so about 26% down the fleet, which is very respectable when you see how much the light boat is stopped by the chopped up sea state during the race.

I drew and built the smaller 5 panel Mk2 rig for the following year, and the handicap dropped to 0.776, but again the weather let the smaller boats down so it was another year before a race was completed. When Amiina raced the following year they were 107 out of 647, or 16% down the fleet, which is very respectable.

It is hard to put in words the confidence that the simple to sail rig gives. I know it's not perfect, but those who stick fairly close to the Amiina Mk2 all seem happy with the result. I hope this helps to clear the water and does not muddy it more. Don't forget, the aim was not to build a rig for racing, but that the RIR was thought to be the best way of sailing alongside cruising boats all trying to go in the same direction with the same intension. Even if our tactics were wrong (and they generally were) and we were in the wrong tidal stream for a good overall race position, we were still sailing alongside other boats, often bigger and faster and were able to see how well the rig performed. It is satisfying to sail tack for tack with a Westerly Fulmar who started 10 minutes before you when some 4 hours into the race.

I'll post this now, and write further on my questionable ideas soon.

Cheers, Slieve.

PS. Please note that Whisper, in the PBO report is a highly tuned boat where the owner is prepared to lavish expense and effort beyond the normal for a simple cruising boat. No way like for like.

The skirt panel

Back in 1995 I and JRA member James Creighton exchanged ideas and sketches via old-style letters. This was one year before our first e-mails to each other.

The upper sketch on the diagram below shows what I called a skirt panel  -  a sort of water sail.

The idea was to first construct the standard junk sail and then rig it and test sail it. Only when one was happy with its vertical and horizontal position, could one measure up and construct the extra panel and tie it to the boom. It was to be set and furled with some sort of brailing lines, lead back to the cockpit. A separate sheet had to be clipped to the clew end of the extra boom (..doing second duty as a spare batten...). The ‘cloth’ should be transparent, if possible. This skirt panel was not meant for short-tacking on the fjords, but rather meant for reaching in the lightest winds in open water.

Nowadays, when tabernacles and high-set booms have grown popular, some sort of skirt panel may make sense.

I never got around to make a skirt panel for any of my boats.
Reason: My boats are generally generously rigged....

Cheers,
Arne

Thanks Ueli, I do appreciate your quick response, and Arne too, who managed to email me a copy of the entire magazine. (Magazine #70).

First of all, a humble apology to Arne for my previous comment, which was intended as a light-hearted, poking-fun kind of challenge (and also intended to balance what I think was a slightly incomplete narrative). However, Arne did indeed report pretty accurately what he had read, and my response now looks merely snide and presumtuous, and not for the first time I have to regret, and attempt to "eat my words".

For me, though, it has a happy ending. I had been slowly downloading and saving the early newsletters (later to become the magazine) and had not yet reached 2016 - just a little prior to the time I began receiving them directly as a member. Its one of Lynda's early editions, a brilliant example, packed full of information and a humbling reminder of the talent and range of knowledge that exists in the JRA community. I am glad I was able to get a copy.

Its worth the embarrasssment to be able to report that Arne was right, and I was wrong - but also that there is indeed a little more to the Amiina story. Evidently the panel was removed, for a short period, and according to the reporter (who speculated that it would not have improved the performance) it was to reduce the rating. And it was the upper panel removed, not a lower as I would have expected. This took place before the evolution of the Mk2 sail. It would have been interesting to have seen a photo of the sail without its top panel, and to have known more about how it performed in that configuration. Instead, the article went on to describe something equally as interesting: a follow-up comparison trial between Amiina with her full (Mk 1) rig, and a bermudan rigged sister - and then a further dialogue with Slieve (the designer of the rig) and Edward (the owner of Amiina). And the magazine also includes a wide ranging collection of other interesting articles.

I've still got a lot of learning to do. It is totally worth delving back into these earlier newsletters and magazines.

Thanks again.

Thanks Arne. I guess there is more than I knew about.

For some reason the magazine won't download for me. I have always been able to download magazines in the past, but this time I get a split second message saying "waiting for ap box" then nothing. I would quite like to read the article.

Any chance of sending the article to me?

We've got Amiina coming up on Featured Boat soon, probably February.

Arne wrote: I once read that a panel was removed from the SJR of Edward Hooper’s Amiina to avoid a bad handicap. Amiina surely didn’t go any faster after this remedy (the mast wasn’t shortened), but it was supposed to be smart from a racer’s perspective.

I don't know where you read that Arne, nor why you are so sure about the result. Maybe it was on Fox news.

Not the removal of a panel, a new sail was made, for a number of reasons, and the new sail (what we now refer to as the Mk 2) happens to have one less panel. Slieve explained, on another thread, you must have missed it. I have copied an extract from Slieve's post over to this thread so that anyone who is interested can be correctly informed:

"The Amiina Mk1 rig was my first attempt to provide the design for a commercial sail-maker to build. Unfortunately we did not get the sail area right as the racing brigade would not admit how the Splinter 21 rig had shrunk. It was not helped by the efficiency of the SJR so a smaller rig was required. Even so, when I asked Edward to check some measurements on the Mk1 rig I found that the sail-maker had not accurately followed my numbers and had variations between identical panels. The Mk2 rig was therefore going to be home built to avoid this problem. I also wanted to simplify the design as by that time I was getting quite a few questions off-line from those trying to build the Poppy style rig and getting stuck." 

By the way, on the subject of racing rules, cap this one:

I entered Serendipity at a recent Tall Ships regatta, but did not start. (I crewed for Zane on Pango, instead). Despite that I did not even start the race, I still won third place in my racing division. True story. That 's efficiency, Arne.                                                          That just shows how well a SJR can perform.

(I was so gobsmacked at the prize giving that I didn't know how to react, so just accepted the prize (a donated bottle of gel coat cut-and-polish). Next day I went to give it back to the club secretary or whoever the official was, and she said "Oh that's fine, we couldn't work out which junk was which, at least you paid the entry fee, that's all that matters. It all goes into the club coffers".   As the only other yacht race I have ever entered saw me come dead last (by a lap) I'll accept the glory of this one - but I don't polish boats, that's for yachties. I've still got the bottle of polish. Anyone want it? )