The Plan After a few seasons sailing in an ancient GP14 a few facts became apparent. Firstly I did not want to race particularly, although any time I did so I thoroughly enjoyed it. Secondly I did not want to spend my time perched on the weather gunwale; I go boating to relax, not for the adrenalin thrills. Thirdly I am stuck with the boat I have, for reasons of finance.

So the GP fell down, for me, by being overpowered and over complicated, especially when single-handing; this in spite of fitting slab reefing. Most of the time I set out under reefed main alone. What I wanted was a reduced, simpler sail plan that could be handily rigged up or down by one man. I looked at several rigs, but the obvious low aspect ones such as standing lug would have involved moving the mast position and I wanted to keep the Bermudian option if possible. A dipping lugsail would have preserved the balance of the mast position but is not suitable for single-handing. A high aspect ratio junk rig would have served, but the high unstayed mast would have given problems.

Then, after reading a couple of books about Polynesian voyaging, I had a look at the crab claw sail. It appeared to have the following virtues: It can be set on a short mast, in this case 12 feet, which will fit inside a fourteen footer. The main spars can also be 12 feet and stowable. This length would give a sail area of about 50 square feet which is about the same as my reefed main. As it is balanced across the mast I can preserve the current mast position. It is a `low tech' rig so I can make it myself.

Potential difficulties seemed to be: The mechanics of tacking and gybing. Reefing.

The Execution The mast was made from a cut down wooden one. My original wooden mast has been more or less unused since I replaced it with a deck-mounted metal one, and a few more seasons of being kept in the open would probably have ruined it anyway. After much thought I gritted my teeth and sawed it in half 12 feet from the base. I then removed the fittings and planed off the luff groove. A dumb hole in a block of hardwood saved me the cost of a sheave and I put a plywood cap on to keep out the weather. It fits in the boat very nicely! The spars are bamboo from a carpet warehouse. The ones I had were trimmed to just over 9 feet (for use as tarpaulin supports) so I decided just to make this my yard/boom length, even though it would not give a big sail area. However this could well be an advantage with a test rig.

As this was all an experiment the sail was cut from a Bradshaw's polytarp. I allowed about 8 feet or so in the 'leech'. I pondered long about the best way to attach the sails round the spars; but I wanted the spars bare so 1 could experiment with halyard and sheet attachments. Tape plus grommets and lacings was a slightly slower possibility. The proper, but slower way would be to follow Chinese practice, which is to hem a thin rope in the edges, seize that rope to a thicker bolt rope and then lace that bolt rope to the yard. This meant a lot of sewing. However a colleague at work was prepared to do the hemming on her machine so we went ahead, using 2mm cord as the inner rope. The leech of the sail was left cordless, merely being hemmed over. I then seized the sail to 6mm rope - old main halyard - at about 4 inch intervals, so that the sail was double roped. At this stage the sail didn't look very big and I would have been surprised if it was much over 35 square feet. I could only hope that the theoretical increase in efficiency would compensate for this!

Getting the bolt rope taut on the yard was tricky as I had not allowed quite enough working room at either end, nor had I allowed for attachment points apart from a short 2 inch tail at the leech ends. Another time I would allow enough rope tail for a sheet bend, and use overlong spars. So it was cheap blue line across notches in the spar ends with rolling hitches on the bolt ropes and make it as tight as possible, and then half hitch the rest. This wasn't too bad except that extra lashings were needed at the tack end to firm things up. I worked out a place that seemed right for the halyard, i.e. where the sail hung `cleanly' and attached the halyard with a rolling hitch. For the tack line and sheet I pondered again but in the end figured that the best solution would be to sort it out in the boat itself. On shore I hoisted the sail on the proper GP mast just as a tryout. It looked the job OK, filling and tugging nicely in a force 3/4. One possible mistake would seem to have been not having the ends of the spars meet, as this meant that the boom tended to move forwards putting a fair strain on some of the seizings. I thought that perhaps some positioning of the sheet might cure this but made a mental note to beef things up here. It should be noted here that the sail is set flying, in that it is little more than a large kite tied to the boat; unless the rig is taken aback the spars do not touch the mast.

The Result The first test run was in a force 2/3, and amazingly, it worked quite well. I made the sheet fast to aft of the boom centre, with the halyard central on the gaff, and the tack line at the end of the boom. This gave the sail a nice firm look although the transverse creases persisted. The initial reaction was that it was a much better behaved sail than the Bermudian, although its very small size will account for much of that. Tacking was no problem at all, at least in these very light winds. Just put the helm down, let the sail go slack and dip it as the bows cross the wind. On the wind the helm was balanced enough to be left for several seconds. Running was a doddle with no worries about sailing by the lee; the tack line can be eased to allow the sail to swing across the mast more. The sail does not flog when the sheets are eased but hangs fairly quietly with just the leech fluttering. Coming back to the slip was far less fraught than usual as I could take the drive off the sail with the wind astern, unlike the Bermudian. The pull of the mainsheet needs to be downwards, so some attachment point round the centre thwart would have been welcome. Also because I needed to be handy to the tack line, I tended to sit further forward than usual; a firmer tiller extension might be needed when single-handing. The sail seemed to go better when hoisted at a fairly high angle, but this may have been more apparent than real - as they say.

The next tryout was in a nice firm force 3. The rig was still very controllable although the untackled sheet was hard on the hands. James (11) was at the helm and I am sure that with the Bermudian rig he would either not have been there, or I would have been nervously shouting at him. When tacking we never missed stays although she was slow picking up speed again, but that might have been James at the tiller. The general handiness of the rig was very apparent at a crowded slip; we just lowered sail, took down the mast and bobbed about until rush hour was over.

So all in all I am quite pleased. Some additions and modifications are still needed, in particular a less brutal sheet setup, but I feel that I have achieved my main aim, to whit a cheap, handy, lower powered pottering/cruising rig involving no alteration to the hull itself. The next step is to make a sail based on 12 foot spars, this time of proper sailcloth with some provision for reefing.

Bibliography Series of articles in PBO September to December ‘88 by Tony Marchaj. Crab claw theory, but little practical information. `Junk Rig Decoded', PBO Jan. 92 by Vincent Reddish. For details of double bolting and lashing to spars. `Practical Junk Rig' by Hassler and McLeod. Loads of practical hints, especially on unstayed masts. `Polynesian Seafaring' by Edward Dodd. Nothing of practical help but loads of romance.