New Rig

[Brian Gartland]

Hi All,
I'm thinking of changing my Tangaroa to a sloop from a ketch. The rig is a bit of a disaster as it is and I've been offered the rig from a Macgregor 36 for free. The mast is 44 feet and I'm wondering if that is too much. The Macgregor has two feet more beam as well. I also wondered where the mast tabernacle is placed when a Tangaroa is sloop rigged. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.
Brian

[boatsmith]

Sounds cool to me. I would rather have more sail area and reef early than not enough and have to motor. I don't know the numbers but I think that the Mac 36 is a much lighter boat than a Tangaroa. You will probably need to put the mast step on a fore and aft beam spanning two atharwtship beams to get it into the right place to keep everything balanced. Good luck David www.boatsmithfl.com

[Budget Boater]

What do you mean by a mess? I had a Tangaroa MK IV that was Ketch rigged.

The MacGregor 36 sail may have the sail's draft in a poor location for a Tangaroa. Otherwise, the mast would go about halfway between beams 2 & 3. You would have to build a new mast tabernacle to support it.

Here are a couple of pics of my old Tangaroa. The foremast was on beam 2 while the mizzen was on beam 4. It worked really well.

[Ann and Neville Clement]

Hi Brian,
A free rig? How could you resist? I agree that you can always take reefs early and often if you have a tall mast, but you do need to get up and take those reefs just as soon as it first occurrs to you that you need one. Do not wait! My old single hander 28 foot monohull had a 43 foot tall mast and a cloud of sail for light air and many reef points which were well used starting at just 12 knots of wind. It is a good thing if managed properly.
I suggest you make your new rig into a cutter with an inner forestay with boom and a small staysail either to hank on or on a roller furler. You can make the inner foresty removable if you want to do short tacking with the big jib and you can shift the boom out of the way whenever you wish too. What I mostly used to do was limit my short tacking to harbor entry situations when the engine failed (this was before Nev joined me). I would take one or two reefs in the main and use it and the staysail to short tack into a harbor and anchor under sail. It was entirely manageable because each sail was self tending. And I used the staysail for heavy wind sometimes on its own with excellent results.
I know that the Tangaroa Mk IV does come as either a ketch or a cutter but the study plans we have here on Peace do not show much detail. I am sure Wharrams will be willing to send you the appropriate pages showing the present design for the cutter. You might just as well see what the guru has to say about it!
We have two friends with cutter rig on their Tangaroa Mk IV. One is Roger Ayers and the other is Dan Kuntz. I am sure either or both of them will be happy to respond if you wish to contact them and I can give you contact info privately. Roger built one Tangaroa Mk IV and then he built another but stretched it and re arranged the insides. Nev thinks they were both cutters.
All the best to you and your family, ann and Nev

[Budget Boater]

The Tangaroa in the link I provided above is Roger Ayers' first Tangaroa which was ketch rigged. It was my first Wharram and I had to do a lot of rebuilding on it due to deadbeat owners that didn't take care of it between Roger's ownership and mine. It did have a small inner forestay with a tiny sail for it, but I found it fairly useless as it was positioned just to far inward with too small an area. I still have the parachute anchor off of that boat. It is the one he documented using in his account in the book Drag Device Database.

I thought that Dan Kunz's boat was a Tiki Wingsail rig. Wasn't this the boat Double Eagle II that he purchased from Clark Grimsley? I remember it being a Tiki Sloop. This is a photo of it from when Clark owned it. Clark and Gene were out testing the spinnaker that day. Did Dan change the rig, or am I mistaken?

Ann and Neville Clement said:

We have two friends with cutter rig on their Tangaroa Mk IV. One is Roger Ayers and the other is Dan Kuntz. I am sure either or both of them will be happy to respond if you wish to contact them and I can give you contact info privately. Roger built one Tangaroa Mk IV and then he built another but stretched it and re arranged the insides. Nev thinks they were both cutters.

[Ann and Neville Clement]

Oops. I stand corrected. Ann and Nev

[Ann and Neville Clement]

Hi,
Roger Ayres just phoned us and states that his second Tangaroa Mk IV (which is the only one we know well) is cutter rigged as we remembered and it works just fine. He would be happy to speak to you about it. Contact me privately.
I still think it would be well worth your time to contact Wharrams and see about getting a design page for that rig which was standard for that boat.
Ann and Nev

[Brian Gartland]

Hi,
Thanks. I'd love to talk to Roger. The plans came with the boat so I have a page that shows the cutter rig, though I might need some help interpreting it. I'm more used to reading house plans. Abby is going to find your e-mail address today so I can contact you privately. Or, you could send your phone number to my e-mail. [e-mail] Scarlet and Abby say hi.
Brian

Ann and Neville Clement said:

Hi,
Roger Ayres just phoned us and states that his second Tangaroa Mk IV (which is the only one we know well) is cutter rigged as we remembered and it works just fine. He would be happy to speak to you about it. Contact me privately.
I still think it would be well worth your time to contact Wharrams and see about getting a design page for that rig which was standard for that boat.
Ann and Nev

[Ann and Neville Clement]

Hi Brian,
You can email me at [e-mail] whenever you want. I do have Roger's email address but hesitate to put it on line without his approval.
We had to read the instructions with our Tiki 46 plans a couple times and often together to figure it out, but then always wondered why we had so much trouble in the first place. I think it is simply extra caution and hesitance due to it being a boat on the water. We want and need to be extra sure we got it right because the water is wet and us folks do not have fins or gills.
Did you get the building instructions that were with the plans when they were first new?
Perhaps a cardboard trial run might help?
Likely Roger will remember well the whole process of building it. He is generous with his information over the phone and will be enthusiastic to help. Said he would be delighted. He lives in Texas these days. We've known him for about 6 years.
Keep us posted! Love, Ann and Nev