balkan ship yards back on the move….
hi guys been roofing for a month, so my proa came to a dead stop…..
built a nice beach bar on the black sea, the morning swims before the 13 hour work day were what held me together…... anyway that’s all done now. so time to build a proa!!!!
now, got a question. could anyone tip me off on the crab calw rig????
1. how thick should my spars be? they will be made of straight grain clear spruce, they will be 4 meters long, and at 60 degrees between them they will carry almost 7 square meters of canvas. so what would be a good diameter for them. they must be very strong because they will get used in heavy air with reefed canvas. I think the way to reef is to lash the bottom third round the boom, then second reef will be lashing another third.
or use brailing lines just to depower, probably be just fine, but I dont think you could point very high with two bags aloft…... so all depends on direction, position and condition. in anything from a force 7 and more I will rig my “baby claw” 2 meter spars and almost 2 square meters of heavy canvas….
So who out there has experience with wooden spars? how thick is thick enough??
2. canvas??? how heavy?? I found acrylic 200 grams per square meter, the out door stuff. I like it and I love the price….. I don’t want the best, I want good enough for less…... any opinions?
Finally, got back yesterday, so shot a quick clip that shows this and that, anyway tomorrow back to it…...
so need your opinion guys. thanks.
all d best.
Hey Rael,
I love the video, and the build! The interior layout of the boat is great. When you don’t have rudderboard trunks in the way you certainly get a lot more usable space lengthwise, on a small boat!
I had a look in Dierking’s “Building Outrigger Sailing Canoes” (a great little book to have, I definitely recommend getting it!—page 137 for these values). The T2 with the crab claw rig has 8.1m^2 of sail area, if you intend to use wood, then he recommends the following:
mast: untapered timber (solid or hollow) or aluminium with 3mm wall thickness, diameter 57mm for all
yard: tapered solid timber, 60mm at the base and 30mm at the top (5mm extra if it’s hollow), or with aluminium then 50mm diameter with 2mm wall thickness
boom: curved boom laminated from 3x 19mm x 42mm timber bent on a jig and laminated together
The numbers are a bit weird (like 57mm) because they were imperial units, rounding them up or down a bit shouldn’t make much of a difference though.
For the hollow spars see the little sketch I attached (essentially a hand copy of a sketch in the book). That would save quite a bit of weight. Alternatively he suggests that you can take fiberglass windsurfing masts and laminate two of them together at their bases for the yard, and the same thing but with a bit cut off the thinner ends for the mast.
I hope this helped, and all the best with your awesome build!
Cheers,
Marco
I’d be a bit worried having the halliards coming into cleats like that on the deck. They’re kind of easy to pull out (you could trip over the line for example, or accidentally uncleat two lines). And then the rig comes falling down on your head. A crab claw rig is pretty heavy! You could add an old school cleat behind the jam cleat for the halliard or put the cleat on the mast.
will do just that, that was the plan.
but thanks anyway. I’ve had many lines popping out of clam cleats….
so I will have a standard cleat in front of clam cleat that the line will get secured too.
thanks for shedding light on the matter, bang on…......
Marco, thanks for the support.
your info is a great help. was thinking of 55mm all the way, no taper.
well today been looking at the stuff and now my thoughts are shifting towards 60mm bottom tapering to 40mm top…..
so thanks for the fast reply, just in time as will need to order more epoxy for my fiberglass…... so what an opportunity to get down and make some spars…
last but not least, Thanks to Gary Dierking for leading the campaign to revive the pacific proa.
a day will come and they will rule the seas.
but that we all know…...