Sails Detail

From BluWiki

Sail Detail

Sails on this class of boat are traditionally made from tarps. Yes, really. They work fantastically well, if not strangely colored. One online retailer sells white tarps, for that traditional sail look. You can also hit up your local construction site for some Tyvek, which is also light, strong, and white.

For this class of boat, 60 square feet is a good starting point, although anywhere from 50 to 80 square feet of sail should do nicely.

You have two basic choices for a sail if you don’t already have access to a pre-existing sail rig. Spirit sail, or square sail.

Shorty has a great write up on the spritsail, at 59 square feet. Being triangular, it helps your boat look more like a sailboat “ought to”, but requires a huge (expensive) tarp, and 16’ mast in the process. On the plus side, it requires only one pulley at the top of the mast, and is more simple to design and build than a square sail.

You may be thinking about a Bermuda rig, which is you’re your child thinks of when he or she draws a two sailed boat, but they require an extremely tall mast to achieve 60 sq feet (18 ft if you expect the boom to clear your head) , and really are most efficient when using a jib. PDRacers on the other hand favor shorter masts and a single sail (no jib).

For square sails, you have the Gaff rig and Lug rig. The Lug rig is simply two parallel 2x2”s with an 8x10’ tarp strung between them. This works fantastic unless you want to sail more than 20 degrees in to the wind. You could potentially hang this sail from as short of a mast as 10’.

Gaff rigs are slightly more efficient, and you can cut a good 65-70 square foot sail from an 8x10ft tarp, which will hang from as short of a mast as 12’. They require more rigging, but not a whole lot more effort is required to build one than a lug sail, and in my opinion, look fantastic.