goat island skiff sneaky shark at English RAID

Club Racing the Goat Island Skiff – PY yardstick handicap racing

So how does a lug rig boat go in club racing? My designs won’t be outclassed in club racing. I’m really keen to find out how the yardstick (handicap) changes as George and crew get used to the realities of course racing making the boat sail faster. We end up with an estimate of PY – Portsmouth Yardstick for the Goat Island Skiff.

Goat Island Skiff going fast downwind with heavy load - Texas 200

Strong wind downwind with unstayed Masts, Cat Ketches and Cat Yawls, more safety and efficiency

John Goodman and I sailed the immaculate Goat Island Skiff he built from my plan in the Texas 200.

The boat showed itself to be one of the faster in the fleet despite loading up such a short boat with food, water and camping gear for six days with little outside support.

We played with sailing the boat by the lee – a method used by racing boats to gain both speed and control.

I document the method here including a video showing how the angle of heel can be controlled using the mainsheet.

The Canon – Tools for thinking about sailing and boat design – Books and Articles

One of the most important things as a designer or sailor is to keep an open mind, but also to be able to analyze things in light of real experience and prior knowledge. These are online and paper resources that force thinking in different ways.

This article, after a bit of a spiel, goes on to give some great resources that “opened my eyes” at different times in my life.

They focus on areas of structural design, sailing, sail aerodynamics and touch on a bit more.

lug sails at very competitive prices - reallysimplesails.com

WIKI setup and tuning Lug Rigs, Spar bends and weights, Sail controls and More

The conservative viewpoint is that traditional rigs are not very efficient. However allied to efficient hulls and set up correctly, lug and sprit rigs can be very efficient indeed – not too much slower than “modern” rigs, particularly when the same lessons are applied to trad sails and way cheaper.

This is a WIKI drawn from the group on the Storerboats forum discussions on setting up lug and sprit rigs for best performance building on the information in my webpage.

Setting up for performance – Balance Lug – Goat Island Skiff

John Goodman who recently spent 5 days semi racing a Goat Island Skiff in the Texas200 event got back to me with some observations and even some pictures of aspects of the boat and the sailing.

I have responded with suggestions to make some further improvements. Between John and me there are some useful tips about setting up a boat for more speed.

However the standard setup of the Goat is fine for most – it is still pretty quick in standard form.

There is advice for both lug and sprit traditional rigs here.