Motor sail option?

[WillieC]

Kinda like our 19 degree cold snap! 54....kids these days.

I agree about the chainplates and such. I have plenty of extra holes about the boat, slowly patching things up. The big hole to patch, besides fixing the rudder seal, was the propane locker vent. Plenty of water came in that hole but not anymore!

I may slow down on the projects and start putting things back together. Running out of horizontal surfaces to spread out on but I love the new deck on top of the cooler! I can practically mount a vise on that sucker, hmm, another project!

Careful on that mast project. The older I get, the more I have to think through negative unintended consequences.

[DesertAlbin736]

Finished up all the things needed, a cradle with rollers to fit over bow rails, the winch, the windshield protecter, the bracing stays. Stowed mast & boom on the trailer frames. Will try out a test raising in the storage yard on Monday or Tuesday.

[DesertAlbin736]

Test raising a success! All the pieces in place for the mast raising system & tried out today. It's a pretty labor intensive two person operation & could not have done it without the help of the Admiral. Over 2 hours, but a lot of it was taking it slow & figuring things out, being first time & all. For example a couple times we had to partially lower it to straighten out shrouds that were crossed & on the wrong side of the spreader. The electric winch was worth its weight in gold as we could just stop when needed & no worries about ropes slipping or mast tipping.

All this is done with the truck disconnected from the trailer & pulled far enough ahead to clear the mast as it's being hoisted on deck. This is the first time this mast has been up in at least 17 years, as the previous owner never tried installing it since they bought the boat in 2001, and nor have we in the past four years. According to documentation that came with the boat it was home ported in South Florida for a time way back in the day & made several trips to the Bahamas.

Step #1 Unlimber the mast & boom from the trailer frame rail. Place mast atop a pair of sawhorses.
Step #2 Install windshield protector, bow cradle, side stay fittings on deck & temporary clamp with eye bolts to the mast, 5 feet from base. Attach radio antenna to top of mast. Also a wind vane, which we didn't do this time but will when we actually get ready to go out on the water.
Step #3 With Admiral on foredeck I lift the butt end of the mast up and over the roller on the temporary mast cradle attached to the bow pulpit rails. Not being sure how it would go, I dropped the anchor down from the bowsprit and added a small roller to the end of the anchor roller. Turned out not to be needed. At this point the shrouds & stays are still wrapped on the mast with duct tape. A trick here learned from another sailor is to use duct tape with the sticky side outward to wrap the shroud to the mast. On this mast the spreader is a straight tube that can be removed from the mast, which is necessary to carry the mast on the trailer. When the mast is pushed up on deck as far as the step bracket the distance to bow cradle is right at the balance point, so at that point it's easy to control.
Step #4 Attach the mast to the step. The bracket is a little bit unusual in that instead of a bolt going though the middle of the mast there's a L shaped clip on the outside of the front that goes over a round bar in the step bracket & held in place by a 1" inch 1/4-20 bolt & nut. Not crazy about that setup (English made mast), but it does allow cable connections for the lights & antenna to stay inside the mast, not through deck fittings to the side. The wires for the steaming, anchor, and spreader flood light are combined into one regular flat-four trailer light connector, so it's just as well they're not exposed to weather. The downside is the mast is not rigidly held & prevented from twisting.
Step #5 Undo the shrouds (easy, just cut through the duct tape, no untying etc & no sticky tape residue), install spreader tube, connect side shrouds & forestay to chain plates, making sure they're correctly routed. Connect the temp side bracing guys & snug with trucker hitch knots.
Step #6 Hook the 12V winch where the mainsheet usually goes, clip the power cord to the house battery.
Step #7 Install the boom with topping lift attached, run out winch cable & attach to the boom end. Attach temporary boom guys to steady the boom.
Step #8 Double check all connections & shroud routing.
Step #9 Admiral mans the winch control (remote in/out switch, no hand cranking!) while I'm on the foredeck guiding the mast up and watching for snags & making sure the turnbuckles aren't kinked.
Step #10 With mast up & everything as it should be, attach the back stay, adjust tension, remove the winch & install regular mainsheet tackle.

Mast is up! We're sailboaters again....sort of.

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Single pair upper shrouds with spreader & single pair of lowers attached forward of the upper chain plates all the way to the outside of the deck makes things fairly simple. "Air Draft" is approximately 30 feet above water line including the VHF antenna.

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Deck fitting for temporary side guys made from 3/8 plywood cut to slide under the loops of the hand rail. The crumbs on the deck are all debris that fell out of the mast as it went vertical. Plywood salvaged from an old waterbed frame.

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The side guys are tied off to a wooden clamp with eye bolts mounted 5 feet up the mast. A sheet metal screw in the mast acts a stop to prevent it from sliding down the mast. Ropes are tied to the mast eyebolts using an adjustable trucker's hitch and to the deck eyebolts with a bowline.

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Mast cradle on the bow rails with trailer roller. Made from 2x6 & 2x4 construction lumber, blocks attached with 3 inch countersunk deck screws. All this was from stuff laying around the shop. Not a penny spent buying new materials.

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A couple other minor points: the boom is high enough that it doesn't interfere with my roof hatches, which have 10x10 inch tinted windows built in, so if I remove the canvas covers I can look up see the sails & wind vane, even with hatches closed.

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Also have a mast head antenna, which should greatly improve VHF range, including AIS targets & DSC distress call range. Not shown here, but will add flag halyards for burgees & courtesy flags and a disk radar reflector.

Tomorrow will go back over to the storage yard to lower the mast back down, but before we do will hoist sails & see how they look, which we didn't get time to do today.

[WillieC]

Don't you love when a plan comes together? I am impressed. It will be interesting to see how it all works for you this summer. Nice work, you two.

[markdbecker]

I have only raised the mast by had with another person to help. Am looking forward to how you rig your mast and may copy what you do as my wife cannot help in the raising..... Ticaboo's sail rig is a later version by the PO and sets forward and has a compression post...... I only motor-sail with the engine running because of the steerage. Have found with the wind at around 10 knots from the side she will performs at about 3 to 4 knots. And it is hard to turn through the eye of wind. You need to turn with the wind.....

[DesertAlbin736]

Mark,

One step I forgot to include in the above post is that the cockpit canvas needs to be folded forward or removed while raising the mast, since it would interfere with the the winch cable or main sheet attached to the boom end as the mast goes up. Looking at the picture of your boat I'm not sure how practical that would be, since you have different style of bimini design than the stock canvas like we have. What I did with the winch was to bolt a wood base onto it & add a pair of L brackets on the underside facing each other such that it can attach where the mainsheet normally does, secured by a regular clevis pin. In our case since I had previously relocated the batteries to the locker under the starboard bench seat it was a simple matter to connect the winch's power cable to the house battery using alligator clips. It's still a two person job to lift the mast up on deck from ground level & step the mast, but not as hard as I feared it might be. The procedure we worked out is for me to lift the mast up from ground level & over the temporary cradle with rollers while my intrepid wife, who BTW is a real trouper, guides it to the mast step. In your case with the step further forward on the deck most of the mast's weight will still be in front of the boat while you're trying to pin the mast. But in our case the distance from the step to the bow is 11 feet and the mast is 21.5 feet long, so once it's close to the step it's fairly well balanced & easy to control. My biggest fear is slipping and hitting the windshield, which is why I made a protector board out of plywood.

I was going to raise the sails today & take some photos before dropping the mast back down, but there's a weather front on the way with wind and rain later today, so we went over early & dropped the mast. Besides, where we keep the boat is a dusty dirt lot & no place to lay out sails & fold them up. Next chance to try it out on the lake will be the weekend of March 10th when our sailing club has a St. Patrick's Day raft up, assuming we don't get winded out.

I hear what you're saying about sailing. I'm considering this as strictly a motor sailing regime, as much about roll dampening as trying to make it into a sailboat. I would be running the engine full time but at a lower RPM even if we happen to have a breeze on a beam reach & would power through the eye of the wind rather than a 360 gybe. It'll be sort of a "gentleman don't sail upwind" kind of thing. Up where we're going in the Pacific NW, winds are generally light during the summer anyway, and even regular sailboats end up motoring or motor sailing 75% to 80% of the time. Tide currents are such that light air tacking won't get you anywhere if the current is against you.

Actually, a few years ago a friend invited us up to Powell to spend a weekend on a houseboat. The houseboat's owner, who wasn't there, was a friend of our friend who let us stay on it, but we couldn't take it out from its mooring in Wahweap Bay. The friend brought along her Montgomery 12 day sailer and another person in the group brought their fish/ski I/O runabout. This was during August. It was hot, and literally not a breath of wind the whole time we were there, so the sailboat stayed tied up to the houseboat. Other than the short bit we had our A25 there on the way down from Idaho four years ago & had the cooling system problem, that was the last time we've been out on Lake Powell.

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[markdbecker]

Mark, that sure is nice! Oh the places you'll go and the things you'll see! So different from the Puget Sound. Lovely.

We have been having snow up here of late and it never lasts long. I have a heater running in the boat which is on the trailer right next to the house. As the snow was melting off the boat I noticed a patch about four inches by six inches about 18 inches in front of the center of the windshield that melted first. Since we do not have the sail set up, I am guessing this spot has something to do with where the mast was planned to go. Somewhere in all the info we have on this boat, a PO commented that "obviously" the WillieC at some point had the sail kit installed. This is about the only indication I am aware of that the boat was rigged. (1973, DeLuxe, 1575 or thereabouts.) am intrigued by all this talk of the sail set-up, but not enough at this point to do anything about it. But that picture...Wow! How was the picture taken?

Yea Life is indeed good. Just had a guy on shore taking pictures. He did a awesome job.

[DesertAlbin736]

Yea Life is indeed good...

dolce vita: Noun, usually 'La Dolce Vita'
A life of heedless pleasure and luxury.

‘he was young, beautiful, and living la dolce vita'
Origin:
Italian, literally ‘sweet life’.
Oxford Living Dictionaries

[DesertAlbin736]

Epilogue: Now that mast raising issue has been resolved, next thing to consider is fore and aft mast rake adjustments. Looking at the photo it appears the mast may have some forward rake, which in sailboats can cause some "lee helm", that is a tendency for the boat not to swing into the wind when helms is slacked, instead turning downwind, which is not good. Usually a little aft rake angle cures that problem, looking for just enough weather helm that the bow does swing into the wind, but not too much requiring opposite helm & force on the wheel to hold course. There's not a lot of adjustment left on the forestay turnbuckle to rake the mast any further back, so we shall see how it goes when we test sail it weekend after next and measure the actual rake angle from the vertical with the boat in the water

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[markdbecker]

Man that's looking good. Like the set up could you take a picture of the winch setup, ie step six and seven.... boy your mast is close to the windshield...... another picture showing the mast placement on Ticaboo.

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[DesertAlbin736]

Just imagine a winch, as shown in the photo from the Harbor Freight catalog posted toward the top of this thread, attached to the mainsheet tang at the front edge of the aft cabin top. I'll shoot a few more photos next time we raise the mast at the lake a week from this coming Saturday.
Yes, the mast step is right up against the windshield, but apparently that's the way the factory kit did it as shown in the owner manual drawing. Honestly I don't know if the the boat came with the sail rig as a factory installed option or was added later. Your boom must be that much longer than mine because they both reach to just past the front edge of the aft cabin.

Other differences & similarities include: 1) your upper and lower side stays attach at a single point on the sides of the doghouse, whereas mine attach at the outer edges of the side decks to separate points about a foot apart; 2) your forestay attaches all the way out at the bow, whereas mine attaches a few inches ahead of the forward deck hatch (thus allowing room for bowsprit & anchor roller); 3) my boat has full life lines & stern rails which I really appreciate having; 4) You have to run your mast light wires up externally up the windshield to plug in where the stub mast goes, while mine go through the deck under the mast step & are completely concealed; 5) you have the same eye straps attached across the front edge of the wheel house roof. Wonder if they were factory installed? 6)forestays on both boats are masthead rigged, not fractional.

This last photo you posted must be an old one, still has Arizona registration number & 2012 sticker.

[markdbecker]

My sail rig was added after 2000 by the PO he got the sail rig from a boat up in Cedarville Michigan when he was sailing the Great Lakes. Used the older picture so you could see the setup better.... attached is the picture of the boat that donated the rig......

A-25 from St. Ignes mast donor boat.JPG

[DesertAlbin736]

Guess that answers the question on rig differences. The PO of our boat picked it up in 2001 from an estate sale in Ontario, Canada. There's some mention in the documentation about that previous owner being from Niagara Falls, ON. Before that owner it was down in Florida in the '90s, and before that was owned by a guy in Illinois dating bay to the mid '80s. The Yanmar was installed around 1986, and the AguaDrive unit added around 1990. The trailer was purchased new down in Florida in 1999 by the Canadian owner. There was no mention or receipts related to the sail rig being a separate purchase, so it likely goes back further than back than any paperwork I have on it. Documents relating to the original importation from Sweden are lost to the mists of time. All I know is that the other day was the first time the mast has been raised since at least 2001, since the immediate PO before us never attempted to use it.

This photo was supplied by the previous owner as our boat, then known as "Nowell's Ark", sat in front of his house in American Falls, ID after a snow storm in May, 2008. Note the extended bowsprit with a pair of 5 gallon cans of diesel hanging over the bow. One of my first projects was to shorten the bowsprit as much as possible and eliminate those cans. I still have the cans if I ever need them, but with an estimated range of 200 NM on 15 gallons of fuel with a 5 gallon reserve, or even 145 NM on a half tank it's not likely I'd use them. Just the idea of trying to transfer fuel from a jerry can on the narrow side decks without spilling some is a scary thought. I've also since moved the fender racks up to the bow rail, actually scrapped the homemade ones seen in this old photo & replaced with store bought ones.

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[DesertAlbin736]

Mast raising shakedown! Finally got out to the lake to try out the mast & sail rig. Very labor intensive, as the following photos taken by a friend show. What took place before these photos was un-hitching the truck to get it out of the way, manually hoisting the mast up on deck, pinning the forestay and upper and lower shrouds to the deck fittings, and installing the boom with topping lift attached & the winch cable. Anyone who's ever been a trailer sailor knows the drill. The Admiral, in white blouse & dark pants, and sitting on the aft cabin top, is manning the electric winch control which pulls the mast up with the boom serving as a 'gin' pole as I guide it and check for snags & kinked shroud turnbuckles. Stepping the mast & setting up various guys & cables is half the battle. Once all is in place it takes just a minute or two to bring the mast up to vertical. Certainly not something we plan to do for day trip outings, strictly for long duration coastal cruising for roll dampening & as back up propulsion. For lake outings we'll continue as a motor boat. The next time the mast goes up will be in Washington State for this summer's Desolation Sound cruise.

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Here's how it looks on the water, anchored out in our favorite Lake Pleasant cove.

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General observations under sail:
1) Beam reach, main & 110 size jib, port tack, winds abeam blowing 7 to 8 knots, GPS speed 5.4 knots with engine running at 1,700 to 1,800 RPM
2) Not a whole lot of boost over engine alone speeds at those RPMs, but noticeable roll dampening.
3) Jib sail obstructs about half of forward view through the windshield, so we might end up just using the main sail
4) Mainsail hangs limp (jib not raised) when motoring dead downwind.

Did not try sailing with engine off or in neutral, but over all satisfied considering what it is. After all, the mast height and sail area are much less that a dedicated sailboat of similar size and displacement would have, since there is no weighted fin keel to balance a larger rig.

[DesertAlbin736]

New photo in, La Dolce Vita making 5.4 knots under sail with motor assist, taken by a friend we had along as crew.

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