Proa Rig Options: Overview
The proa has unique requirements for a sailboat rig, the main one being that it is reversible fore and aft. Since no Western craft have this ability, we who are developing the proa for use here in the West are truly in uncharted waters.
The obvious place to look for inspiration is with the traditional proa rig: the Oceanic sprit, developed over thousands of years of ocean voyaging by the Pacific Islanders. This rig, often called the…
Outrigger Junk Woody in Sweden
It’s not every day you find a junk rigged single outrigger yacht cruising the fjords of Scandinavia! This example is from Röda Möllan Sweden. Akka is 36’ (11m) of pure wooden proa porn, featuring a spindle-shaped hull with a NACA 0066 profile, schooner junk rig, Bruce foil (hydrofoil) equipped ama, hobbit house-like wooden interior and enough chrome and varnish to make a Riva jealous. See more in the Forums: Junk rigged Tacking Proa…
Thinking outside the triangle
Here are a couple of new boat designs with rigs that harken back to the days of working sail. The trimaran is a Dick Newick design for a cargo/passenger lug rigged schooner, for the Vaka Fanāua project, the second is a 60m yacht designed to evoke the romantic image of a dhow.
The lug rig was a favorite of Phil Bolger because it combines short spars, sturdiness, simplicity, thrift and aerodynamic power. The first five of these virtues…
The ArcSail Proa
Malcolm Smith always has something really tasty cooking in his workshop. His latest project is a force-balanced design utilizing a ‘ring wing’ that he calls the ArcSail. The concept has huge potential for boats both large and small, and I’m very pleased that Malcolm has opted to share it with us at Proa File -Editor
I have a long time fascination with sailing boat configurations that minimize heeling moment, due to their potential for…
Spark: a three-hulled Rozinante
Spark is from the drawing board of Richard Newick - which he describes as a “three-hulled Rozinante”, and I couldn’t agree more. It’s as if the spark of Herreshoff’s inspiration was passed along and reinterpreted through Newick, resulting in this outstandingly elegant trimaran. These images are of Jim Conlin’s Damfino, launched last June in Westport Point, MA. She seems a perfect steed for sailing the coast, perhaps tilting at a few…
First Flight
A working hapa model has finally been accomplished by Frenchman Luc Armant. It is the realization of the theoretically perfect sailboat: an airfoil and hydrofoil, tied together by a single line in tension. The massless sailboat has long been the dream of sailing pioneers from Bernard Smith’s aerohydrofoil to D. Costes’ chien de mer (seadog) to the hapas of J. Hagedoorn. The achievement cannot really be overstated, IMHO. Well done, Mr.…
The Spinnaclaw
The boys in the lab have been working overtime on a new invention, and I wanted to give you a sneak peak. Internally we call it the spinnaclaw, however marketing is still testing the final brand name with focus groups.
As the name implies, it is a cross between a crab claw sail and a spinnaker, sort of a Scandinavian/Polynesian hybrid. The idea is to mount the crab claw boom to a spinnaker pole, and shunt the sail like a big…
Testing the crab claw sail
Nicholas Schneider sent in some results of his crab claw rig experiments. Thanks Nic!
These are qualitative studies of slender foils and leading edge vortices for sailing craft. The results of these experiments, suffering from improvised input and variable conditions were good enough to inspire further work but produced more questions than answers.
Description of rigs in drawings:
Proa rig comparison table
Below is a list of proa rigs under active development today. As you can see, there is hardly a consensus as of yet! None of the rigs are perfect, and all have various strengths and weaknesses. The Rig Ratings Table is a first attempt to quantify three rig performance areas: Performance, Handling, and Safety. The table is the result of some spirited discussion on the subject by the Proa File International mailing list. Many thanks to…
A bloody fine first day with a crab claw 2
Part Two of Wade Tarzia’s epic first sail with a crab claw rig.
Bleeding while you are swimming is disarming and kind. What seems to be water dripping in my face is actually something horrific—that it never stopped dripping should have clued me in, but I’m still pondering that nth dimensional paradigm. Somewhere a baby is crying. I know this sounds like a cliche because, in all the bad novels, as soon as something interesting…
