DIY sailmaking

Converting a Cherry 16 Trailer Sailer to a Balanced Lug rig.

I tried my home made balanced lug sail off my 10 footer, ERO, formerly a Heron dinghy, (see Jack Holt Heron re-imagined part 5, on bd.n), on my 16 foot Cherry, and it works - only just, due to being under powered and too small a sail. I had a spare wooden Heron mast, and rasped it to a snug taper fit in a near top section of tapered aluminium mast; an off cut from an Australian Light Weight Sharpie mast. I fitted the section of mast inverted to the front of the existing mast compression post, resting on an exhaust pipe clamp clamped to the compression post, and another 3 big U clamps holding it to the post rigidly vertically. Then drilled and rasped and filed a hole in the cabin roof to make a neat through hole into the inverted mast section, and dropped the wood mast in, with some extra filing to make a good neat fit when bottomed out in the square hole. The mast has a square lug protruding from the bottom to prevent it turning in its footing. When done, I fitted horn cleats to the mast, opposite the boom side, and put a couple of saddles in the cabin top for down haul tackle. Removed the main alloy mast and shrouds temporarily, and had a little test sail at Garden Island S.A. with the lug sail. The big tide and fickle winds made it a slow and difficult sail to get almost nowhere, maybe making 3 - 4 knots against the ~3 knot tidal flow; it was slow going, but it did work. I was sailing hard, stalled against the current eventually, and gave up after 1/2 an hour of tacking in a narrow channel, but not making way. Tacking and gybing was easy, and just as well, since the cabin did nearly as much sailing as what the sail did, not to any advantage. It works, but needs a bigger lug sail, and longer spars; maybe a xmas holiday project if I could be bothered. Now I have a cabin top hole to make / find a plug for, to keep the rain and other undesirables out. A 2 1/4" bath plug fits, but looks bad, and blows out on the road.

It was all relatively easy to do, but I wouldn't do it to a fibreglass roof, or a nice classy boat. Or at least I'd do a better job of it; the Cherry is a bit of an old roughy plywood boat I can modify, and then make good with epoxy etc. No pics of the sail up that day, but it would have looked a bit silly, with a very small sail on a 16 foot, cabin trailer sailer.
With no tide and more steady wind it might have been more useful and fun; but there is potential there, with a bigger sail.

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Over the Xmas break I made a new balanced lug sail and rig for my 16 foot Cherry. Using a Heron mast as explained above, and a longer piece of aluminium mast for the yard ~3.8m, and the top of an Aust Light Weight Sharpie mast for the boom ~2.3m long, same length as a Heron boom, (could have been longer, but I already had it in stock). The sail shape was with the yard tilted up in a higher angle, about 48 deg. to horizontal, so it sticks up high, with a good leech curvature, and a length of cordage stitched into the luff, to enable really cranking it down tight and straight. A generous loose foot curve was included, which flaps, so I will put some eyelets in to lace it a bit, while still being loose - ish. It took several days to make it all, full time, out of the same material as the last one - 50%/50% poly cotton sheet, off the roll at Spotlight, a craft supplies shop, 5m high X 2.5m wide folded double, about $50 worth, plus 2 rolls of polyester thread. Zigzag uses a lot of thread, and there was a lot of stitching. There's no 3D shape developed in it; it's a flat sheet with the warp vertical, which will stretch, and blow out to a shape on its own.

All the nice days and nights of my holiday were spent inside on the sewing machine, or working on the spars, and when finished, there was a minor heatwave. Up before sunrise to hoist it in the back yard, and work out configurations for ropes etc.. Then when all was sorted and ready to test, on another stinking hot day, (summer in australia), I was up at 4.00am, load up, drive to the ramp, and launched at sunrise. Beautiful conditions, but no wind.

Took it for a test sail on the first Saturday of 2025, and it worked OK, better on the Cherry than the smaller one I made for my 10 footer yacht was. Launched at dawn, and waited for any breeze before leaving the pontoon, since a strong tide was still running, and it was to be a high tide followed by a very low tide, so I didn't want to be swept along out of control with no wind. I have no motor. With a 3 knot breeze the sail finally took shape, and I got going, and made way, only just, in the final bit of the flood tide, before the slack, then the ebb took over. I tried squaring the sail for some down wind trial, with the wind so weak that I put Mr octopus strap in charge of the tiller, and lounged forward in the pulpit for a while, looking at the bottom through glassy water.
Just as the ebb came on stronger, the wind came up to about 4 - 6 knots, and I made way against the tide, pointing a bit better than 45 deg. to the wind, and hit 3 knots ground speed, which was OK considering the conditions. The sail's high peak picking up the wind from over the tops of the mangroves gave an improvement to performance. Tacking and gybing was good, and it all seemed to work well in the light conditions. Soon the tide was getting strong again, in the other direction of previously, and the sun was burning, and the wind became negligible, just enough to get back to the ramp. So I called it quits for the trials, and packed up, to be home at 12 noon, job done, cold shower, (car A/C not working), and relax. I look forward to more wind next time, and less tidal flow, and actually going somewhere, or doing something. Without all the sails and sheets, vang, etc. of a fractional Marconi, I might even try fishing from the Cherry, maybe.

So $60 of fabric; mast, yard, boom; hand full of saddles, shackles and sister clips; 10m of good cordage ~ $35; some bolts and rivets; all up less than $250 spent, plus labour which I didn't pay myself, loss of a week of holidays, but plenty of personal satisfaction; and a decent sewing machine with a good zigzag. It still needs a pulley and V cleat for outhaul, and a downhaul cord system for the boom's fore end luff when set forward for downwind settings, since the long yard's upper section levers down, pulling the luff up, and lets the boom drop at the rear.

It's not as efficient as the sails designed for the Cherry, by a long way, probably half the sail area, but for pottering about with un-trained sight seeing friends, it will be easy to control and relax with, while still getting about at a modest pace.
I might make a genoa for my 10 footer next, if the bug bites me again. I'm not good enough or efficient enough to be a 'sail maker', but for a hobby and repairs it's not too hard. I did some un-stitching of mistakes, broke one needle, need strong glasses to thread the needle, had to walk away from it now and then for a break, but it's not too bad. Almost fun, sort of. Worst parts are marking up all the lines to follow, fiddling with gussets, and concentrating hard when trying to stitch long straight lines along hems. Appreciate your sail maker, it's a difficult job to get a professional finish.

Second sunday of 2005, another hot day, up 4.00 am, launch Cherry 6.00 am, to try the new sail in some wind. The weather bureau got it a bit wrong, again, no useful wind till about 11am, so paddling until then. It didn't like to tack much, and was slow when pointing about 45 deg off the wind. Pulled in to a sand bar and moved the yard's uphaul forward on the yard a few inches, and tightened the loose yard lashings a bit. Much better now, although not nearly as good as the proper sails. Does make way up wind, but not efficiently, and speed boat wakes upset it. Reaching with 10-12 knots and small white caps, wind on the quarter, it managed 5 1/2 knots, and 6 max; not great, but easily manageable. So it's good for short trips with land lubbers, but annoying if you want to 'sail'. I'll try it on my 10 footer next, once I fix the hull hole I made in it at the last messy retrieval. I'm still happy with the sail, for what it is, just not ecstatic. You get what you paid for, and I paid very little.

 

I tried the new bigger balanced lug sail on my 10 footer yacht, and it worked well reefed down on the one reefing line I put in. This is the sail I made to try on my 16 foot Cherry, with a very tall angled yard and peak (seen above).
Winds on the water were over 15 knots, gusting to well over 20 Kn, with streaks and white caps on the close chop, which was more than 1 foot high on the protected inland waters; big for a 10 foot dinghy to bash through relentlessly. I was getting wet. It seems to point better than the smaller lug sail, even when reefed, but doesn't like to tack without some speed; but that's really the hull, and centre of effort/centreboard relationship. I tried it out at first close to the ramp, in case it was no good, but it was good, so I went out into the channel against the wind and tide, but failing to complete a tack, and running out of room for a gybe, I came up against a rocky embankment, and heard something crack. I was pinned by the wind and couldn't get off, and the tide was dragging me backwards against the line of rocks, before I put my leg over in the water against the rocks and pushed the bow about, to get off and away, finally tacked through the wind. (Can't do that easily with a big TS, or keeler.)
Sailing again tentatively, nothing drastic seemed wrong due to the cracking noise, rudder was ok, centreboard seemingly ok, no water gushing in, so I kept going. Now tacking with a bit more speed, off the wind more, and less making way into the wind. I got into a reach where the wind was barreling down the channel, pushing the running tide, and making the chop bigger. While hobby horsing over the bigger chop, and heeling wildly in gusts, and pushing hard, with water splashing / blowing over the bow, and the yard swinging about wildly, there was another big definite crack of wood splitting, and the un-stayed mast suddenly got more wobbly. Change of plans - back to the ramp asap, if I can get there. No speed for a tack to get about and head home, so I did a hand controlled but out of control gybe, where I noted that a boom vang would have kept the boom down better when it was wrenched from my hand. Hoping nothing else happened, I made it straight back to the pontoons. There, I found that the oregon mast footing block had split across two pieces of wood which were epoxied together, split across the bond, not along it; so a lot of force had been applied there, and it's a weak spot in my design. Nothing else bad or broken found.

I expected the mast to snap before anything else, but it held up to the stresses, and didn't seem to bend much with the sail lowered to the reefed height, with the boom quite low. The first crack I heard at the rocks probably weakened the footing, and chop, and bouncing over it continuously, shaking the long yard and boom severely, was the final problem causing the breakage. A bigger swell wouldn't have caused as much stress as the steep close chop.
The sailing sounds were strange, all other sail boats' rigging was whistling in the wind, but mine with no stays made no sound other than the sail.
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I re-epoxy'd the mast footing, and added a 2.6mm X 25mm SS strap, and some screws, to reinforce and increase its strength, then with varnished screw holes, and varnish on and under the SS plate, to bed/glue it in. The break was along the grain, and it smelled strongly of tree resin, so it may have been not so structurally sound to start with; it is straight close grained with no knots. Now long screws go through the SS strap and tree rings, and they won't de-laminate.

Next time out on the following weekend I took ERO out on a very nice day, 2-3 knots 'wind' and glassy in the morning, trying out full sail, and paddling to get anywhere, but when the wind did pick up to around 8-10 knots there was good speed, and well under control; good balance of the tiller, but still some weather helm. Then later in 15 knots in the afternoon, back on the reef, and it sailed very well over proper swell, and some confused seas, averaging 4 knots or more. Making way so well that I decided to take her out to my usual mark, around the Black Pole, near Outer Harbour, South Australia. Three miles out to sea, around the black pole weather station, then back with the wind on the quarter, doing 5.5 knots consistently, and not over powered, but a bit of a wind cock.

The Cherry's lug sail works better on ERO than the first sail I made for it, which may now power a canoe type boat I think. That new sail does work on the Cherry, but its not great on that boat, with less than half the sail area of main and jib. I could make another sail for a longer boom, on the Cherry, using the same long yard. I'll think about it.

Photos at Garden Island, South Australia

Reefed sail on ERO


Full sail on ERO

So it looks like for a balanced lug sail, bigger is better, if you are able to reef it. And mast secured well to avoid movement and/or breakage.

 

I recently painted the new sail, same as I did to the first one, and it looks much better in red.
Before I painted it, I tried an experimental reefing setup, using the original luff reefing point, and adding a new reefing point at the leech a metre above the original reef point, with sewn in ties, so the boom is angled up more, lessening chances of a head hit, and bringing the yard down in angle a bit. It seems to work OK, but not tried it in strong wind yet. It's good to not have to duck so low when tacking.

Full sail in red


Angled 'second' reefing