Design (mine)

[MisterMoon]

Ok, I'll quit grumping around and throw this one out. I've got an article about it in the Oct 15, 2004 MAIB. The boat is called WISHING BLOSSOM, 11'x5', 71 square feet of sail. Gonna build me one someday...

Whut y'all think?

[attachment over 4 years old deleted by admin]

[Craig]

That looks like a nice project. Any more details? Would she be quick to build?

[MisterMoon]

Here's an excerpt of what I put in MAIB:

WISHING BLOSSOM

I have two children, ages 7 and 5, who love to sail with me on our Sunfish-type boardboat. The problem is that we can

[Frank Hagan]

Very nice, and I agree with you on the oars. A paddle could fit under a seat, or easily inside the boat, and provide enough propulsion should it be needed.

The beam should make it stable indeed, and it looks like the rig allows for an unstayed mast ... that and the fact that the spars will all fit inside means it will be quick to rig and quick to sail.

Hard to do, but if you could get it down to 80 pounds, it would approach being perfect! But with the beam, you are probably right on the expected weight.

[Greg Luckett]

Somewhere I have seen nice oars that come apart in the middle for storage....when I find it again I will post the link.

[Stump]

Very cool. Very stable. Looks like a good simple build. Only question I have is if the daggerboard is wide enough to resist lateral drift while under sail? Let it be known that I have very little experience with dagger/center/lee boards (as will be noted with the MASSIVE :oops: leeboard I put on that little skiff I put together.

[MisterMoon]

Thanks for the comments. I'll try to respond to some of the questions.

There's no need to stay a mast only 10.5 feet long. Well, let me qualify that: there's no need to stay a mast that short unless you are carrying a jib and want to add tension to the luff. A balanced lug's mast only need be stiff enough in compression to carry the tension of the halyard and downhaul.

The narrow daggerboard is plenty large for this boat in terms of area. It's narrowness means that it may be more prone to stall out when going slow than a comparatively wider board. Adding area means drag, and drag is slow. My hope is the narrower board will mean that she'll be more reliable in stays, faster to accelerate coming out of a tack, and faster over all. That's one reason I don't show a skeg. WISHING BLOSSOM was never intended to be a rowboat, she is meant to sail. All this comes at the expense of being a bit edgier to helm, but I'm OK with it.

The one aspect of the design I'm least comfortable with is the lead of the sailplan. As shown, she's got an 8% lead. My instinct tells me that it's too much. My plan is to build the boat and sail her first with the current mast position, and finalize the balance afterwards. If the mast needs to come aft 6-8" it would not be the end of the world.