Hello proafans
I live in Sweden and I have been reading and following almost every build here on Proafile for quite a while now. I have a dream, a cruising Proa for open water, I have just started with the drawings in Freeship and in Rhino as well and are just about to start building the first model (see avatar). I will start to build a small proa to sail in lake vättern in the south of Sweden. Today I own a 31 foot Iroquois catamaran, it’s wonderful, but somehow I got fixed with the proa idea. I like the simple yet brilliant idea of a light multihull with a minimum of built in stresses. I want my build to be low in cost and maintenance and since cruising it’s no need for a racer, so therefore I will probably look more into the junk schooner with free standing masts.
Matz
Hello Matz. Sorry in being slow to respond. Welcome aboard! Another Scandinavian. You guys have really hooked onto proas 😊 Your model has simple elegant lines. That is definitely one of the appeals of proas to me; the fact that proas can be designed with these simple curves.
Welcome again.
James
Hej och välkommen Matz!!!
(Hi and welcome Matz!!!)
I really like having all this scandinavian people here!
It seems like cold Sweden will be a Proa-hotspot in the near future.
Please create a thread and tell us more about your design and ideas.
Cheers
Johannes
Hi Matzen,
I see from your mockup that you like the look of combining traditional sheer with reverse sheer. Me too!
As far as Scandinavians and boats? What can be said?
I don’t know if it is well known, but we who live in the Pacific Northwest did not just inherit Scandinavian woodcraft, we also learned from the native canoe/kayak builders here. Long, low, and narrow. This is what the wind and waves teach us. These tell us that we must have shapes that penetrate the waves and shed water.
Thanks for your kind words 😊 The hull design Im working on look very similar to the one of Alexanders “Nixe” which also got the sharp V hull. Only I want mine to be a bit smaller (10m or 32.8 foot ), yet with standing room. I know this will break Wharrams windage rule about the hight relative to the length a little bit. Therefore I want to keep the windage down to an absolut minimum and will use a free standing junk rig, partly to reduce the windage, partly to have an easy to maintain rig and perhaps to reuse thrown away sails. Since Im looking far away over the horizons just like Johannes “The sweede”, I want a safe rig, easy to reef and easy to go wing/wing on the milky run.
I got a “Red thread” through the design as well….
I want the thought of a “strong boat with a minimum of built in stresses”, all extra built in stresses makes a boat heavier as the boats structure in the end got to deal with those extra forces. If I got a light boat it will be easier to drive through the water and use less sail, the anchors will be lighter and so will the hull itself. It all goes hand in hand 😉
If looking at the design from the front one will see a shape of a triangle with the sides bulging out a little, this is a very strong shape which make for a light hull. The free standing masts has no forces which try to shoot them through the keel, or for that matter to snap them of. They got to be short so what could be more right than to design the proa as a shooner. The junk rig will fit well into this concept couse they has the winds force well spread over the cloth and also a low point of effort. Since rigged with two masts one can (hopefully) steer the boat with the rig only, the rudders can be kept up most of the time. Also its easy to hang a lifting jib between the front mast and the ama if needed.
Please correct me if Im wrong about anything above or feel free to give a comment (Im only a newbie).
Im almost through with the drawings and will upload them soon. Freeship is not easy to work with 😉
/Matz
Freeship is not easy to work with 😉
/Matz
I am playing with Freeship as well right now, and I found the following Yahoo group to have some useful information (but sometimes burried in endless threads of yada-yada…):
Freeship_HTandT_Group
Cheers,
Laurent
Not to be curmudgeon, but I have yet to see one *single* first person account of a blue water, big wind, proa with a junk rig.
Why?
Why the need to be so innovative? There are ten-thousand years of sailors before you. Drink their wisdom. The Chinese were NOT blue water sailors. When the seas are twenty feet tall, and the wind is gusting forty plus knots… Well. If if cannot handle that, it’s a toy. Guess I’m just getting conservative in my old age. (Feeling that, for tomorrow I turn fifty-five.)
Right now, my thoughts turn away from double sided wing sails to the crab-claw. It’s a pain to shunt (so I hear) but that rig delivers the goods where it counts. More power, down lower, on tacks that reflect real sailing. In America, we say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” This modern obsession with “easy handling” just makes me think, “Suck it up!” (That’s an American military expression that means, “Get tough. Don’t complain. Be manly.”)
Consider building models. Using the same base design, you can EASILY and CHEAPLY test your ideas against each other. I’d bet a thousand Euros that a crab claw would SMOKE a junk rig—same sail area—on *every* tack, and, oh yeah, junks have a “bad” tack! That’s a deal breaker in itself.
Please, don’t fixate on one particular rig and defend its virtues on a theoretical basis. The South Pacific Islanders produced marvels of engineering. We are only BEGINNING to appreciate their virtues.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Rick!! 😊
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Rick!! 😊
Thanks James!
I am spending the day carving an ama for my five foot model out of some green almond I just obtained. I’m always picking up these little side jobs pruning trees. That’s how I get a lot of my wood. I have this superstition: “The way you spend your birthday is the way you will spend the next year.”
Guess I’m gonna be carving wood AND making boats.
Cheers,
Rick
P.S. Reading back over my last post, I see I did seem a bit too much curmudgeonly. Sorry. Sometimes the way things would sound in person are different than how they appear in print. One time, someone told me that when Franz Kafka would read his stories out loud, he would laugh and laugh. After that, I never saw Kafka the same. So imagine me laughing at my own emptiness. Heh.
😊
Not to be curmudgeon, but I have yet to see one *single* first person account of a blue water, big wind, proa with a junk rig.
Not sure that means much. If you include in your sample only modern proas, then there are very few that are ocean-going, and they all have or had Bermudan rigs. Many of them were race boats built from 1968 to about 1986. The virtues of the junk rig were not top priority, and the sample is small. If you take the base rate of junk rigs among yachts in the Western world, and apply it to proas, I doubt you could expect any junk rigs on proas.
If you include traditional proas from the Pacific, the lack of junk rigs is only meaningful if those people knew of the junk rig, and could build it as economically as a crab claw.
Why?
Proas are rare (in the Western world), junk rigs are rare, blue water passages are rare and cruisers do try to avoid big wind, and many manage it even on blue water passages. For the lack of the combination of all four to be diagnostic, it would have to be below the base rate you would expect from statistical independence, and I am not sure that this expected base rate is statistically distinguishable from zero.
Further, many passages do not result in first person accounts. For example, I know of only three first person account of a proa making a blue water passage. In chronological order: Tom Follett’s account of sailing Cheers across the Atlantic, Steve Callahan’s account of sailing Jzerro across the Pacific, and Bain Robinson’s account of sailing Aroha across the Tasman Sea. I know that several French-designed racing proas crossed the Atlantic, some more Newick designs did, Desjours Mellieurs did, but I have no first person account.
If you don’t restrict yourself to proas, though, there have been a good number of catamarans with junk rig. Wharram used it on one of his early designs, I think including blue water passages. Here you can read a description of another boat: http://www.duckworksmagazine.com/04/s/vintage/multihulls/index.cfm. And here is PHA, a Wharram with a soft wing junk biplane rig: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXj6TJphJ4g As far as I remember, she was built in the Caribbean and crossed the Atlantic to France.
The Chinese were NOT blue water sailors.
Not since 1433, when the new emperor of China forbade the construction of any seagoing junk, and the knowledge how to build the big ships was eventually lost. Before that, the treasure fleet under the command of Zheng He sailed to India and East Africa. As far as I know, Chinese naval technology at the time was superior to that anywhere else in the world.
I’d bet a thousand Euros that a crab claw would SMOKE a junk rig—same sail area—on *every* tack
Some Wharrams have crab claws. If one of them raced PHA, I think I would bet on the junk. Although, I guess this is not the kind of junk rig you were thinking of when you offered the bet.
and, oh yeah, junks have a “bad” tack!
Depends. PHA doesn’t. Slieve McGalliard’s split junk doesn’t have much of a problem with it. Have a look at http://www.junkrigassociation.org/Resources/Documents/Slieve’s Files/AYRS Catalyst 37.pdf
The South Pacific Islanders produced marvels of engineering. We are only BEGINNING to appreciate their virtues.
They also had big crews for the size of the boat. I singlehand. That rules out a crab claw larger than about 12 square metres. A bit small for a boat that could make a blue water passage.
I realise this sounds more curmudgeonly than your post. But although I want to be a grumpy old man if I grow up, this post isn’t intended to be a sample. I just happen to disagree with you, and these are my reasons.
Regards
Robert Biegler
Junk rig fan. Non fan…...
Junk rigs on catamarans are more like wing sails and far more complex than those on junks.
For simplicity - the crabclaw wins.
Yes, the Chinese sailed oceans with them, but in heavy and slow boats…..
Neither of which, a proa should be.
The new Pha broke all its interior wishbones/ribs/battens and needed serious rebuilding.
It has twice the sail and a lot more weight than a simple crab claw.
As for simplicity - equilibre shunts really easy solo and no bad tack…..
Hello
Thanks for your replies! They mean a lot for me as I am on this forum for a reason, to learn, watch and hopefully bring new ideas to others minds.
Junk rig or not? Well the final desicion are yet to be made. My Aim is to keep it simple and efficient, a rig easy to handle singlehanded is important, not least for safety reasons, this is not going to be a racer so speed is not a priority.
When it comes to choose a rig.. In abitrary order…
1. Easydriven, even in light winds, less motor more peace of mind.
2. Set and forget, no need for constant trimming, I know a sail has to be trimmed but why constantly? I want/need to do other things as well and if that mean loosing a knot so be it!
3. Safe and easy handled, Im no fan of a sail that is hard to reef, a sudden gust on the Atlantic sea can come fast.
4. Combining sails, no worry for me, if that mean setting a small storm sail then why not?
5. Windward, some conditions will call for a sail that can go high in windward.
As I said before, Im new on this but got a dream.
Ps/ I will start a new thread soon, the first drawings is ready 😊
Junk rig or not? Well the final desicion are yet to be made. My Aim is to keep it simple and efficient, a rig easy to handle singlehanded is important, not least for safety reasons, this is not going to be a racer so speed is not a priority.
The Junk-rig is very similar to the lug-rig, and I know the lug works perfectly on a proa. Both the modern chamberd junk and lug are very powerful and simple rigs. Easy to use and easy to mainain… Go for it!
I like your ideas a lot!
Cheers,
Johannes
Welcome Matzen!
Great to have more proa fanatics in scandinavia, maybe we can have Sweden proa championship within 5-6 years (;
Have you started with the model yet? and how will you build it? leanght?
Kind regards
/Garg
Hi
Well, I will start with the Ama as Im going to use it for a small proa for experiments wit the sail. As you can see on my other thread abotu Papillon, Im now hooked on the crab claw, after Rick’s comments above 😊 Since I read more about the sail. I was a bit doubtfull before, but now I realize the crab claw is in reality an easy sail to use. Another good thing is that its easy to make them by yourself.
I found an article about Spinnaclaw and think it will be perfect on a schooner. One dont need to shift a single huge sail doing shunts, also there is no need to walk out to the very front end which could be dangerous. And I think they make an good wind rudder on a schooner as well… only good things 😊
I have ordered some balsa wood and will start building as soon as it arrives. Today I got a 9m catamaran, its a good boat but I have always dreamt of building my own.
I didnt know we where so many from sweden here, thats good and I hope we can meet some day 😊
All the best/Matz