Pine Lake Video

Here is some wacky video from the recent sailing session.

Trials with More Ballast

I finally have arranged for more a trial with more ballast. Fantasma now sports about 220 lbs. of steel plate as ballast. The plate are fashioned into 6 removable planks held in by hardwood strips.

For this daysail in light to moderate winds, I also added 2 x ~ 80 lb sandbags at the mast. That brings gross up to the 800 - 900 lb range, which is in the ball park for what Matt recommends.

Also on board for part of the session were 2 passengers (plenty of room for 3) and this brought total weight up over 1000 lbs. She handled that fine, more than fine, as I think she liked it even better.

All-in-all she was well behaved and fairly stiff with this amount of ballast.

This jibing photo is singlehanded (8-900 lbs) and shows her level and getting down to DWL.







These close reach and close hauled photos show her slightly heeled and the chine digging in.



























There is still a bit of lee helm upwind in lighter breezes, but the additional ballast has helped.

Paint and Windows

Fantasma is sporting more paint these days. It has the waterline on it now. In addition, the lexan windows are in.
Next comes the internal ballast and back to the water for more testing.

More Mast Rake

It seemed to me on the last trial that the boat wanted more weather helm when on the wind. (There really wasn't any at all.) I spoke with Matt about this and he suggested more mast rake via moving the step. I planned for this adjustment and have not permanently fixed the step yet. It is secured temporarily by a single bolt. I moved the step 75mm forward, which seems like alot but I didn't want an ambivalent result. Here is a photo at anchor. Compare with the prior post. Sailing in 15 plus knots, all points, over and under powered. With this rake the boat rounds up on her own when overpowered, but it does it in well-behaved way, then will bear off again once the gust passes. All a good thing, in my view but will see what Matt has to say. I may try a mid-point and see if I like that better. The boat tracks well on most points, especially on a beat and in a consistent breeze. With this ballast (~270 lbs of water in 5 gallon cube shaped jugs), she is remarkably stiff once heeled as long as one sits on bottom. In moderate (underpowered) conditions, a helm seat (eyes above cabin combing) works great.

At Anchor After a 2nd Trial

Here is Fantasma at anchor. Did I mention the name of the boat? Fantasma. Spanish for ghost or spirit. Kind of a play on the Enigma theme, too.

In this picture she has 270 lbs of water in jugs for ballast. I am thinking this is less effective than more dense, lower sitting ballast of the same weight.

I sailed her again yesterday and this trial was in both light and shifty conditions and in more wind than the prior one. I will say that I would like her to have a wider range of stability than she has at the moment. It is not clear to me that she will recover from a knockdown with this amount of ballast. Mind you I am going to wait until the windows and hatch are in place (hopefully) before pushing the limits in this department. In any case, she stood up well to 15 - 18 knots of breeze and bay chop. Drove up wind well enough with reefed sail plan and even without windows, only a few drops of spray came in through the cutouts. She doesn't seem to throw much water up off her weather bow.

she has a bit of lee helm which is not right, and I have talked with matt about this and actually set up the mast step with this adjustment in mind. I will rake the rig aft a bit and see if that doesn't help her balance out a bit better on the wind. Also, the sheet tends to snag on the rudder when going from starboard to port, so have a small modification to do in that department. All in all, quite happy with her at this point. Just a few bugs to work out. this is why we are doing a prototype.

Hatches

The rigid hatches are2 part and removeable. A clever design. The forward part lashes to cleats on under the house roof. The larger after part slides on the forward part. The aft hatch gets a Nicro 500 vent fitted to it for ventilation. There will also be another vent in the deck forward of the house.

Sheet

Here is the mainsheet rigging. Not quite as Matt drew it, but I am going to start with this and see how it works.

Rudder

Just a few pics of the rudder setup. Still needs final fairing and paint. Rather than a weighted rudder as on enigma and paradox, I went with a downhaul. While I was at it, I managed to make the uphaul more complicated, as well.

Furler

This is the same as the Paradox furler, although I think the standpipe (lower section) may be a different length.

Window Cutouts

Working on window cutouts and cutting the lexan to shape. Also note the furler and sail rigging are complete. Will try to have photos of both the furler (same as on Paradox plan) and the hatches at some point soon.

1st Sail Pics

These are with 3 people and 200 lbs of water aboard.