Not Dead, But Somewhat Dismayed

One Year Post-Launch

Apologies to my loyal reader for the cliffhanger.  I am alive; the boat didn't sink, or break up, or otherwise fail completely.  I christened her Ihi, which I'm told means "power" or "respect" depending on whether you're speaking Maori or Hawai'ian.  I think the fact that this sort of craft is responsible for etymological similarities that span over 3500 nautical miles of nearly empty ocean is pretty deserving of respect.  I also wanted the name to indicate a respect for the power of the ocean, which is an integral part of Polynesian culture and traditional seamanship.

So yeah, we poured a bit of champagne over the bow and said a few words and launched without incident.

But I have had a lot of trouble with her.  That trouble, and my confusion as to its cause (and of course life getting in the way) is the reason I've been silent so long.

The Problem: Steering

Paddling, Ihi is a bit slower than a non-outrigger canoe.  She'd get there, but she's way slower than, say, a competently handled sea kayak.

Under sail in a stiff breeze, Ihi goes like a bat out of hell.  It's thrilling.

Unfortunately, in either case she seems to go pretty well wherever she pleases, with little regard for helm input.  In Colorado's smallish inland lakes, this results in a lot of brief, terrifying, frustrating darts from launch to the shore.  I never quite ran into anything, or ran aground even, but wow, I had some close calls.

Initial Theory: Hull Twist?

One reason I have been so quiet about my experiences is that I was initially convinced that the pull was always to port, and indicated that I'd built  a badly twisted hull.  There is some hull twist visible in her - I was hasty installing the aft thwart one day, with a bunch of epoxy curing before I could line things up right.  You can see it in this older photo from her build:

It is my intellectual style to ponder a problem quietly for a long time, until I have a plan.  Well, I spent much of the past year wondering if I would have to grind out all of her fillets and rebuild her completely.

This week, I launched Ihi for the first time this summer (shameful, I know), and I rigged her with the ama to starboard rather than to port for the first time ever.  And guess what?  She didn't pull to port anymore (paddling - I haven't gotten her sail up yet this year, due to a spar failure).

Well, that's not entirely true. She veers badly off the wind, whether it's coming from port or starboard.  I think she's misbehaving because she would prefer to be steered with the steering paddle while being paddled along - or because she needs ballast in the forefoot to keep her tracking straight.  I need to find some other Melanesia owners to talk to about this behavior.

It's entirely possible that the twist is a real thing, but my latest thinking on the issue is that it's likely nowhere near as big an effect as the tug of the ama in the water.  Which brings me to my second theory:

Second Theory: Poor Ama Performance?

I built two amas for Ihi.  My first was an undersized aspen trunk, and it's probably only about 60% the volume (and thus buoyancy) it's supposed to be.  It digs in pretty badly, and that can't be good for tracking.  Ihi definitely takes a little muscle to overcome the drag of the submarining ama.

My second ama, which is made from arid mountain pine, is at least twice as dense as the aspen.  It's plenty big, but not the right stuff to make an ama out of.  It barely floats by itself, so it's not able to lend the canoe much help.  And it's so massive that you can feel any acceleration vector averaging against the inertia of the ama, as if it were a giant sea anchor.  The small aspen ama is usable, at least; the heavy pine version is a definite mistake.

I'd like to find another, larger aspen trunk and try to fashion a larger ama that has that magically low density of aspen.  Failing that, I've considered a glass & foam ama, but that's going to be very expensive and time consuming.  I'm more likely to build one out of foam and construction lumber than to go the superlight glass/foam route.  Until I get a new and improved ama of some sort, I won't be able to speak authoritatively on whether the ama is/was a contributing factor.

Third Theory: Untrained Helmsman

One thing I know for certain: Ihi steers unlike anything I've ever sailed before.  She's frightfully sensitive to weight distribution, and her handling characteristics change dramatically with the wind speed.  In the trade winds of the South Pacific, that's probably not a big deal, but here in the capricious, swirling winds of Colorado's Front Range, it's mystifying.  I'm reminded of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's line about juggling in variable gravity.

The only answer here is experience.  I need to keep sailing her so that I can begin to understand how to sail her.  As time goes on, I'm sure there will be fewer and fewer near-calamities.  Who knows?  Maybe I'll eventually get good enough to take her out in some real water, like coastal cruising or that Watertribe North Carolina race I had my eye on.  Ten years ought to do it.... Watertribe 2023, here I come!

Fourth Theory: Poor Sail Trim Capability

I'm certain about this one, too.  As outlined in this post on sail handling the Melanesia, it's critical to be able to adjust the mast's tilt fore and aft, and port and starboard.  The fore-and-aft tilt affects whether she steers neutrally as load changes, and the lateral adjustment is necessary to correct for weather helm.

Well, I initially intended to achieve these adjustments using homemade deadeyes and toggles:

The problem is, there's just too much friction in the deadeyes.  There was no way to adjust the mast position with the sail under load - it wasn't even possible to adjust with the sail luffing, unless I had a helper guide the mast into position by hand.  In the end, every adjustment required returning to the beach, which isn't easy when you don't have helm control to begin with.  I kept having to drop the sail and paddle back to my launch site to try again.  You just can't squeeze very many iterations of that process into an afternoon sail.

To that end, I've purchased a handful of small Harken blocks to replace the deadeyes.  These should allow much more real-time adjustment capability, which will, in turn, give me the equivalent of several month's experience in just a few outings.

Other Things

Let's see, what else have I learned?  Not as much as I would have if I'd been sailing more, but there are a few lessons I can think of:

1. The Melanesia has really low freeboard.  She a wet boat when even my overloaded El Toro dinghy would be dry.  Though this would probably improve a little with a more buoyant ama, it's hard to imagine her working in the open ocean. I'd really want to build some bulkheads beneath the fore and aft decks for guaranteed flotation if I were going to try her in those conditions.
2. The pinned and lashed connections between the jaws and the spars doesn't seem to work for me.  Maybe I don't have the joinery skills, or maybe I'm using poor materials, or poor lashing execution.  Whatever the case, I'll take an epoxy & glass tape joint any day.  I hear of a new local source for bamboo - maybe I'll end up with a second bamboo spar soon, who knows?
3. Assembling Ihi takes a lot of time.  Even if I leave the tukis in the ama and lashed to each other where they cross, I still have 9 major lashings to complete every time I transport the boat.  In my experience, it takes me (by myself) about an hour and a quarter to get everything set up.  She's not a great boat to use in situations where you have to cart her to and fro - though she's very portable once she's disassembled. 

That's all I can think of for now.  I'm not sure how often I'll be posting in the future, but I'll try to report back as I resolve the issues I'm facing.  Questions or suggestions from fellow Melanesia sailors welcome!

Rigging plans

I've been studying the crab claw rig a bit, hoping that it will make sense by the time I launch.  It's very different from Western sail rigs, so a lot of my experience won't apply.  Here are a few of the things I've learned:

Weather Helm
When I learned to wind surf last month, I had some trouble sailing downwind until I understood the physics of it.  As you turn off the wind, you naturally end up with all of the sail on one side of the board, and this creates weather helm - the sail is levering the board around.  To correct on a windsurfer, you center the sail over the board.

Weather helm - the "x" marks
the sail's center of effort

Weather helm corrected.
Note the center of effort is in line
with the hull.

I think the crab claw rig will behave similarly.  If the mast is vertical, all that sail area to one side will tend to turn the boat hard, as shown in the diagram at right.  But if one uses the shrouds to change the mast angle, as shown on the right, the weather helm disappears.

The practical offshoot of this is that I need to be able to adjust the shrouds as I'm sailing, which means I ought to lead those lines aft to the helm.  I'm picturing blocks rigged to the forward outrigger pole, and the lines running from the mast, through those blocks, and back to cleats on the aft outrigger pole.  This is a minor departure from the plans, as Wharram recommends a simple toggle & deadeye arrangement.


Reefing
I mentioned last week that crab claw sails are reefed in an odd manner.  In Western sailing, the sail area is physically reduced by tying (or rolling) some of the sail along the spar or headstay.  The crab claw doesn't reduce sail area at all - instead, there are "spill lines" that bring the spars together and spill wind.

Full sail

"Reefed - the sail is allowed to curve excessively,
spilling wind and reducing the boat speed.

I plan to rig this system on my Melanesia even though it's not in the plans, because I want it to be as seaworthy as possible.  I'd like to be able to sail her in open ocean conditions, and even if I never do, I've had bad experiences right here in our little Colorado lakes with sudden storms blowing up.  Being able to reef in high winds is the difference between being windblown flotsam and a working sailboat.

Practically, this means that I should have four more blocks rigged - two blocks for each reefing line, and one reefing line for each side of the sail.  These lines, too, will be led aft to the helm, where I'll cleat them off.  If you need to reef, that's not a great time to have to abandon the helm station and walk around in the canoe.

Rigging for Load Variations
Because steering the Melanesia depends on the sharp bow holding the water, she's rumored to sail funny when there's no crew to hold the bow down.  Wharram even recommends carrying a 5-gallon water jug (40 lbs) to ballast the bow when sailing without crew!

I've heard of some Melanesia sailors being completely unable to work to windward because of this problem.  But I know that moving the center of effort forward can increase the bow's tendency to slide off the wind.  So being able to change the angle of the mast by adjusting the forestay will be helpful in handling the boat as load changes occur.

Light load, rig tilted forward:
this boat will not go to windward.
The rig should be brought aft to improve
windward performance (I think).

Normal load, rig too far aft:
This boat will tend to round up into the wind,
making it hard to sail in any direction.
The rig should be brought forward to balance the helm.
(I think...)

The practical implications here imply that I need to be able to adjust the forestay, but not necessarily that it needs to be led aft like the other lines.  The only situation I can imagine where I'd want to quickly change the angle of the mast would be if I lost my crew overboard and needed to sail to recover them.  But in that situation, it would probably be best to let the sail luff and paddle to the swimmer.  So here, I'll probably use a toggle and deadeye arrangement like the plans suggest.

Disclaimer
All of these diagrams and ideas are based on "book learnin'" rather than actual experience.  It may be that once I get my Melanesia launched, I find I've got some part of this totally backwards.  We'll see; for now, I think I understand the way the rig will behave, and these are my best guess at ways to improve the seaworthiness of my Melanesia.

Link Dump

Won't be much news around here for a couple days, so here are a couple links of interest to outrigger sailors.

• First, a document about how to handle the "Malibu Outrigger," a sailing outrigger one-design class.  Of particular note are the sections about safely launching and landing through the surf on a beach, which I've been wondering about.  This link comes to you courtesy of Tim Anderson, outrigger adventurer extraordinaire.
• And second, I've also been wondering how the heck one reefs a crab claw sail.  Well, according to this article on Proafile, one doesn't "reef" (i.e., reduce sail area) a crab claw.  But one can "de-power" it quite effectively by means of a line between the spars.  Scroll down to the section titled "Reefing" to read about it - though the rest of the page has some good info, too.