Rigs

[Budget Boater]

Discussion moved here:
Nice Day asked:
the original tiki 46 has a rig with 91qm. i saw yesterday a plan of a tehine with a cutter rig and only 77qm. can you compare this?
we want to use only one mast on our tiki. put i can not reach the 91qm with out having a huge mast. want are you recommending?

[Budget Boater]

It is very hard to have only one short mast and keep the larger sail area. The only rig I can think of that can spread a lot of sail area and still keep a short mast is the crab claw rig. You will still have very long booms, which in my opinion could be dangerous in a jibe. It is a matter of the force of the sail coming across that could do damage, not to mention the very heavy weight of the sail itself.

I still prefer the Wingsail schooner rig.

[Budget Boater]

Nice Day Replied:
we plan to build this crab claw sail. but since a few days, my wife is not sure anymore... long spars and heavy sail, as you say.
would you stick exactly to the wharram rig plan? i heard from people, they would increase the sail area at 10%. not enough sail area in light winds.
what do you think?
one more question. i have seen tiki 38's with aluminum mast's. for the tiki 46, wharram recommended 6.3mm thick alu tupe. i can get tupe in 203mm diameter and 6.3mm wall. but it is 10.6 kg per meter. sounds heavy... what do you think?

[Budget Boater]

You can easily increase the sail area by adding 1/2 meter or so to the mast lengths to increase the overall sail area. Personally, I do not think the planned sail area is too small. I think that cruisers just load too much stuff on their boats which slows them down.

The 6.3 mm think wall of aluminum tube sounds right as well as the 10.6 kg per meter. I used this same material on my TIKI 30 as there was no 3mm thick wall stuff around at the time. It was heavy (for a TIKI 30) but sounds about right for a TIKI 46. Two people could still carry and move it around. I am not sure I understand what you fear is about this as it is part of the plans, and Wharram has done a decent job of creating a strong and capable offshore boat that should take you just about anywhere. Keep from having too much extra stuff on it, and the Wingsail rig should keep you happy.

[Dave Vinni]

I must confess that I am no longer objective about the Tiki soft wingsail rig. It really does work extremely well and the schooner rig is simply the best.

Firstly the lack of booms, heavy sails and the relatively smaller size compared to a bermudan rig make them very user friendly. I have been able to get my sails down in one helluva squall without difficulty. Adrenaline helped, admittedly.

I did increase the size of my masts by a metre each. What I did make sure tho was that the sailmaker made the third reef in the fore and mainsails the same as it would have been had the rig not been increased. I also added a working jib to the wardrobe.

The bigger rig is is only useful in really light winds. I reef early and when going to windward would start thinking of reefing when the breeze hits18kts over the deck. The Tikis are very easily driven and dont need much sail. At this wind strength the sails are being stretched, the boat is going fast into what is probably a building sea and the motion is getting wilder. I prefer stress free sailing. My racing days are over.

So I would stay with the designed rig. The crab claw seems to work best when the boat is designed for it. Otherwise you have a pod and other deck gear in the way. There is little doubt that the crab claw is effective, cheap and easily repaired. But I think it could be a handful for one person in a breeze if you have only one large sail. I accept that I may be wrong on this because I do not understand how these sails are brailed and whether this would still allow the sail to be used to go to windward.

Cheers,
Dave

Budget Boater said:

You can easily increase the sail area by adding 1/2 meter or so to the mast lengths to increase the overall sail area. Personally, I do not think the planned sail area is too small. I think that cruisers just load too much stuff on their boats which slows them down.

The 6.3 mm think wall of aluminum tube sounds right as well as the 10.6 kg per meter. I used this same material on my TIKI 30 as there was no 3mm thick wall stuff around at the time. It was heavy (for a TIKI 30) but sounds about right for a TIKI 46. Two people could still carry and move it around. I am not sure I understand what you fear is about this as it is part of the plans, and Wharram has done a decent job of creating a strong and capable offshore boat that should take you just about anywhere. Keep from having too much extra stuff on it, and the Wingsail rig should keep you happy.

[Dave Vinni]

Most sailmakers have question marks when confronted by the Tiki sails!! Mostly they are figuring how their computers are going to draw up the sail for their computer guided cutters!! They are completely phased when you insist that that mains have to be cut with no camber at all. It seems that the minimum camber their programmes will accept is 3%, and this is too much.

In NZ I would consider contacting Rolly Tasker in Thailand who has made a number of Tiki sails and it appears that his prices are good.

My sailmaker in SA has semi retired and is living in the UK. He did a good job on my sails and made a number of Tiki sails for the SA baots and abroad.

Cheers,
Dave

nice day "wakataitea" said:

shane, thank's a lot to start this forum.... after multihill.com is working very unreliable, it is nice to have a backup (for now) forum.
...www.wharrambuilders... nice layout, easy picture posting..... 10/10... i like it!!!

shane wrote:....I am not sure I understand what you fear is about this as it is part of the plans.....
the compare between alu and wood.
i heard that the alu mast's bend a lot if the sail is reefed. is the wooden mast stiffer?
i introduced the original sail plan to a sail maker here in new zealand. the first thing you see, is a "question mark" over their head when they have a look on the sail.
it is kind of exotic for them here in NZ. there are some tiki's around with this sails. i only have to find the right sail maker.
is the pocket around the mast out of sail cloth or canvas?

[Dave Vinni]

Hi Hans

On both the multihullforum and wharram forum there has been much debate about the sails and sail makers. What eveyone has agreed on is that the Tiki mainsail and foresail must be cut completely flat. The reason being that the sleeve around the mast gives the sail shape, and if you add camber, the sail becomes too full. In effect you are getting double the sail shape you want. As the sails are loose footed, it is very easy to add fulness by easing the sheet. When going to windward tho it is nice to have the mains sheeted flat.

Speaking of sheeting - for my jib I have the fairlead fairly far inboard, in line with the inboard edge of the motorbox. When going to windward I do not sheet the jib in hard but leave it full to get plenty of drive. This is much the same as we did when racing dinghies. Any loss in pointing height is more than made up by not making as much leeway and less chance of being stalled when hitting a couple of bad waves. My expereince is that the T38 really likes plenty of power in the headsail.

Cheers,
Dave

My own experience is that this is true. My main and foremain had 3% camber built in and both sails are too full until I put in a reef.

What I do agree with is a small tuck in the leech to overcome the inevitable strech as the sail gets older. But no camber.

nice day "wakataitea" said:

hallo dave,
where do you have this information about this "no chamber in the sail" from?
is it written in the plans?
thank's for the contact name. i will check this out...
regards hans

Dave Vinni said:

Most sailmakers have question marks when confronted by the Tiki sails!! Mostly they are figuring how their computers are going to draw up the sail for their computer guided cutters!! They are completely phased when you insist that that mains have to be cut with no camber at all. It seems that the minimum camber their programmes will accept is 3%, and this is too much.
In NZ I would consider contacting Rolly Tasker in Thailand who has made a number of Tiki sails and it appears that his prices are good.
My sailmaker in SA has semi retired and is living in the UK. He did a good job on my sails and made a number of Tiki sails for the SA baots and abroad.

Cheers,
Dave

nice day "wakataitea" said:

shane, thank's a lot to start this forum.... after multihill.com is working very unreliable, it is nice to have a backup (for now) forum.
...www.wharrambuilders... nice layout, easy picture posting..... 10/10... i like it!!!

shane wrote:....I am not sure I understand what you fear is about this as it is part of the plans.....
the compare between alu and wood.
i heard that the alu mast's bend a lot if the sail is reefed. is the wooden mast stiffer?
i introduced the original sail plan to a sail maker here in new zealand. the first thing you see, is a "question mark" over their head when they have a look on the sail.
it is kind of exotic for them here in NZ. there are some tiki's around with this sails. i only have to find the right sail maker.
is the pocket around the mast out of sail cloth or canvas?

[Bertrand FERCOT]

I was very interesting in the crab claw rig, but was unable to find an easy way to reduce quickly and safely the sail area. It's why I choosed the junk rig.
The sailing experiments of the Tiki46 with their standard Tiki wing sails show the masts don't like to have a big vertical effort due to the shrouds and a high transversal effort due to the sail and under heavy conditions the masts become too much curved until to break the support of the mast foot. On the old gaff boats, the mast is not put on the deck, but on the keel with a good holding between the keel and the deck. Another problem is the difficulty to down haul the sail due to the friction of the pocket on the mast. On Peace4, Anne and Nev replaced the pocket by a traditionnal lashing and they added booms to have an easier and more safe control of the sails
Last point, at down wind the shooner is not efficience and our friends who owned the Tiki46 N°3 don't sail with down wind, they prefer to tack down wind.
According my own experience with one free junk rig without shrouds established in each hull betwen the keel and the deck I can say, you have a boat very easy to handle with a minimum of efforts. With this configuration the deck is completely free and the beams are not stressed by the masts and shrouds.......

[Ann and Neville Clement]

We often wish our jib were larger on Peace. If we were building again, we would make the bow sprit longer and then it would support the foremast better and also we could have a bigger jib. The schooner rig is good on the Tiki 46. We did not like the wrap around feature on the fore and main sails and cut them off and went to traditional rope lacings and like that much better. We also wanted booms and like that better too. We did not make those changes lightly but waited until we had sailed with the designed rig and sails a long time first.

Remember that you will be growing older as you sail your beautiful boats and you will need to find ways to lighten the load on your older body. We found that Garhauer blocks with lovely ball bearings were a good thing and the cost was very good. Look on line and if you need assistance, the man Guido understands Wharram issues. Very nice blocks too.

The wooden masts are very heavy. Very heavy indeed. I hope we will hear from somebody their experience with the alloy masts. Jacques is about to launch his lovely Tiki 38, Pilgrim, with these alloy masts. They are light but they are not at all as rigid as the wood. Perhaps a thicker mast wall would give more rigidity without adding much weight? I know very little about it, but perhaps somebody will know and write in. Fact based knowledge is so much better than uninformed opinion. Luckily we are blessed on this website and have many folks who really know or have deep experience.

If building wood masts again I would add a thicker layer of fiberglass around the bases, add a block of wood ahead of the mast bases to keep them from "walking" forward, put fillets around all the little "thumbs" that hold the shroud loops at the tops of the masts, and a huge fillet around that "tongue" that sticks out forward at the bases of the masts. We found tiny hairline cracks in those areas after 20,000 miles but after adding more fillets and some more glass in some of the areas, I doubt that we will ever see any more cracks.

We have Garhauer tracks with travelers for the fore and main sails and we also have booms for those sails and we did this because it makes it easier for us oldsters to have lines led aft to the cockpit. Less running around. Now we can sheet in the fore without getting up. Nev takes the port side in the cockpit and I sit to starboard and each tends his own traveler sheet while sitting down. Most civilized!

If I had a smaller boat - like a Tangaroa - I would have the cutter rig with just one mast. But for the larger boats, I do agree with Wharram that two masts are needed to reduce sail size so they can be easily managed. I will admit that we have only reefed once in all the years we owned the boat. But we never really race, we are lazy, and are not very good sailers either. We just drop one sail when it gets too windy and things are then usually under good control and we are enjoying ourselves again. It is a shame, really, but that is all we care about.

When sailing down wind we do find the fore blankets the jib and we go slower if we go wing and wing. It is then best to tack down wind as Bertran says. The gybe is a gentle move for our boat. If we had alloy gaffs, it would be even more gentle, but it is pretty good as it is. If the jib were larger, it would be so nice down wind! Our cruising spinnaker is great and we do use it more and more.

Ann and Nev