Nice Goat Island Skiff Videos from John Goodman in Texas

John has been doing some research on the yawl version of the Goat Island Skiff.

The Yawl version has a new mast step added some inches in front of the original mast step to keep the rig in balance.

John and family sailed the boat in the last Texas200 event.  Their reports are here

Texas200 sailing in the Goat Island Skiff – Days 1 and 2

Goat Island Skiff sailing in Texas200- End of Day 3

Goat Island Skiff sailing in Texas 200 – Update

Goat Island Skiff sailing in Texas 200 – the Goodmans

However, now he is trying to see if this does need to happen as the Goat is so perfectly balanced under the original rig that it might just be possible to add the mizzen and move the mainsail slightly further forward on the original mast.

One of the advantages of a balance lug is the ability to move the sail slightly forward or aft to balance the boat’s steering.

From John

We went sailing today. We put the mast in the original position, not in the new yawl forward mast step. Per some of the questions on the forumn we tried this to see what would happen. The links are from our days sail. Look to see if you see anything different on how the boat sails. It was not very windy today so it was not much of an extreme weather test. We still had fun.

Imagine our delight when a 40 foot sailboat pulls up and tells us how beautiful our boat is.

He is going to report his thoughts later, but one great result are some more wonderful sailing videos of the GIS doing its stuff.

]I do suspect that the boat bouncing around in waves (never a really big problem – you can see how it is moving nicely here) is to move forward rather than back.  At least when heading upwind.

But John will report on all the videos later as the experiment continues on my forum.