Sail making Supplies

There's one thing you'll learn VERY quickly about boat building: it goes VERY slowly.

Not a ton of progress happening over here, but things are moving forward. I'm still working on the sail. Right now I'm working on reinforcing the edges. I actually made a video about the sail and I'm going to try to start posting on YouTube as I progress. The video explains a lot of why I'm doing what I'm doing and a lot about why I'm choosing these particular materials for my build.

Here's a picture of when I was sewing the yellow rope into the folded piece of tarp.

I didn't go into this on the video, but the presser foot I'm using is a specialized 'embelishing' foot that is made for going over cord. It was $5 or $10 I think, because things run a little expensive for my machine. But I think this foot is totally worth the expense and I've gotten a lot of use out of it with all sorts of decorative and utilitarian elements.

That said, you can TOTALLY sew the rope in with a regular foot. The fact that the rope is hollow makes it easier.

The other thing that happened that I'm excited about is I got rope.

Just a little bit of rope. Not too much. You can never have too much rope.

A video showing my childish exuberance for something as mundane as rope. Feel free to mock me. 

So I know I threw two videos on here this time instead of my normal pages of words, but I'm sure I'll find the balance soon between spoken and written word.

I'm gonna go sew something.

A piece of Junk Sail- pt3 of the Ulua Proa project

Lookit!

I know, I know. You see a kid, Cheez-its, a tarp and a pole.

I SEE a sail, mast, hard-tack and my galley-slave-er-I-mean-second-mate... Yeah.

Ok, so the sail is just a tarp. It's a $30 heavy duty tarp that we cut into the right shape and then sewed "cambers" or darts into to give the sail a bit of a shape. I still need to reinforce all the edges and corners.  We were going to make the sail out of cotton but I think it will mildew if we don't get it perfectly dry every time. And that's annoying. Someday I'll drop the money into nice sail cloth but for now, all that money needs to go towards the actual boat.

I did discover that my sewing machine does NOT like the UV stabilized poly thread that I'm using. Then my husband tried to use it to make a button hole on a different project. Heh. That didn't work. Its good stuff that will hold up to the sun's violence, but its just thick.

The mast is a 12' aluminum windsurfing mast that I got on Ebay for $50. I'm not certain it will be tall enough to allow for the boom (the wood pole at the bottom of the sail) to clear our heads, so we might make a modified stub sail like this.

Why? Because I don't like concussions. 

The other thing I purchased of interest recently was three shark teeth. This is quite random, but so am I so don't worry about it.

I got one for each of our small family and I intend to sand down the edges a little so they're not as dangerous then mount them on the bow. See that little nubby thing on the tip of the boat? That's called the manu and sometimes its quite elaborate. Therefore, that means I get to have some fun!!

At first I wanted to put a dragon head on the bow, Viking style, cuz I'm a Viking. But then, considering that this is a Pacific Island boat, the Norse Firedrake didn't seem appropriate. So my mind wandered back to the time we sojurned at the Polynesian Culteral Center in Hawaii and visions of weaponry burst forth upon my minds eye. Sorry, the mention of Norse Mythology sometimes causes me to wax poetic. I'm done now.

We saw many examples of weapons like this. A tribal man's brass knuckles and dagger combo.

Carved wood, with shark's teeth lashed to a groove in the edges to create a beautiful weapon that I wouldn't want to be attacked with. For a pre-metal society, these were probably very effective. Well, I've always been fascinated by the history of weaponry, so incorporating something like this seemed appropriate to me.

The only challenge is to do it in a way so we don't damage ourselves on the teeth. This will be fun.

Already running into squalls! Building the Ulua pt 2 of many... The Junk Rig

You know the phrase, "the honeymoon is over?" Well, we didn't even get to the dating part of this project before we hit some major challenges. Its like we got in a fight the second time we saw each other. Such is life, right??

So here's the problem. Our garage is 22 feet long. The Ulua is 17'8" long. No problem I though. Well, it turns out it might be a major problem because of all the crap we have. But we press on, ignoring the problem right now like responsible adults. We'll burn that bridge (or stored crap) when we get there.

We're more than halfway done with the lofting. This gloriously beautiful pile of plywood is the beginning of greatness.

At least, that's what I'm telling myself. 

While I wait to do the cutting with my hubby, I spent the morning trying to wrap my head around the sail plan and rigging for the Junk Rig. Historically a traditional sail for Chinese ships, the designer of the Ulua tried it on one of his other outriggers, and he said it worked wonderfully. I've always been a fan of the unusual and I don't really like the lobster claw rig, so I'm going for the junk rig!

I'm going mainly from this page, but this whole website is a HUGE wealth of knowledge on all things boat-building related. I was able to contact the designer of the Ulua and he said the 78 sq ft sail plan on the Duckworks site would be fine for the Ulua.

Then I was silly and I ordered a mast from Ebay. It's 12' aluminum in 3 pieces. It looks like I'll need an extension for the base, but that shouldn't be too difficult to work out.

I thought it might be wise to figure out how much the rigging would cost for the sail, so after much toil I realized I don't know as much as I thought I did. Isn't that always the case. Also, the blog on the Junk Rig makes some assumptions that were hard for a first time boat builder/sail builder to grasp.

So I thought I'd try to clarify a little, assuming I've figured it out correctly!!

To start, I like to get everything all on one page, so I can see it all together, how it would look when sailing. So I made this and tried to color code everything.

This is specifically for the 78 sq ft sail, so the sheetlets are a little different. But this is how I understand it. I don't know if that's helpful or more confusing!! I would read and re-read the Duckworks article, and go to the Junk Rig Forum if you have questions.

The only thing I still don't get is what does the main sheet get clipped to? We'll see. Time for... MORE RESEARCH!!

I tried to itemize the hardware needed for the rigging. When I priced it all out, buying mostly from Amazon and Duckworks, it came out to around $100, not including sail cloth and battens. That's encouraging, at least. For lots of info on cheap sails, check out http://www.polysail.com/. Makes me all warm and fuzzy knowing there's other ridiculously cheap people out there.