Gira Gira

Beautiful boat. I wish I could make it to the messabout , maybe one day. It might be a bit hard to bring my boat, though I’d love to have a sail with you guys. Cheers John

Mate, beautiful job.

Yeah, I’ve missed a few Sydney Raid trips lately. My wife & I were out in central Australia on a month long camping road trip, in my other great distraction an old Land Rover Defender Ute (pickup). We have a good thing going with Sydney Raid, great bunch of people & some fun trips in company.

Don, good idea. I’ll have to play around with that system.

G’day, Yeah it was a good trip, completed over 10 days 2 day drive north from Sydney 1500km ( about 950 miles) 6 days on the water. We visited remote areas 35miles off shore but only accessible to shallow draught vessels. The areas a marine sanctuary so the fisherman don’t go there. We were the only ones at the coral cays, which was a real privilege. Sail back to the mainland & then 2 days drive home. And yeah my CS 17 is pretty much always faster than the O’day in all conditions. I build the CS to do these kinds of trips. The boat has exceeded my expectations, it’s a capable, fast and a safe cruising boat. Cheers John

It was originally was just a dyneema rope yoke to get the mizzen sheet up above the motor. However it kept fouling on the motor. So I added the pvc conduit to hold the mizzen sheet block up. The conduit is stiff enough that it doesn't bend side to side. Because it is a rope attachment it’s free to move fore & aft to align with the angle of the mizzen sheet. It works well & cost me nothing. Also I run a “German “ mizzen sheet & wishbone boom so the sheet emerges at the mizzen mast beside the main sheet.

Mate, it’s PVC electrical conduit with dyneema rope through the middle. it helps stop the mizzen sheet tangling on the outboard motor.

This is what I did

She looks great mate

She looks great mate.

I had a bit of a tinker in the shed & came up with this.

You might be onto something there, great visibility when reefed. It reminds me of a time sailing in a state championship race, we got a great start, rounded the top mark first, then hoisted the spinnaker upside down…it happens to all of us…

Mark, the wishbone booms are old sailboard booms that I extended with aluminium tube. Now I know the wishbones work, I intend to laminate some timber ones…some day… I like the wishbones simply because they interfere less with the sail shape. I come from sailing high performance boats and having the sail drape over the sprit would have irritated me every time I looked at the sails, (I realise the performance gain is minimal). The wishbone booms are more hassle when raising & lowering the sails as the battens tend to get caught in the wishbones. The wishbones also take up more room in the boat when the sails are lowered and weigh more than straight sprits.

I think the straight sprits are fine, I think it makes very little difference to the performance having wishbone booms I like the look of the wishbone booms, however they are more hassle. The wishbones are old sailboard booms extended out to the same length as the sprit booms. They are meant to be prototypes…one day I’ll laminate some nice timber ones… I looked at a few wishbone setups & cobbled those ones together.