Spindrift 11N - lug rig?

[JonSomers]

Greetings, all!  I'm about 20 hours into the construction of a Spindrift 11N (and absolutely loving it).  I'm glassing the interior joints of the hull today.

I'm thinking about rigging her with a lug rig, either a balanced lug or even a Chinese-style junk rig (although not sure how useful the full battens would be in a dink). I was wondering if anyone else on the forum had experience with rigging a Spindrift thus, or words or warning, etc. (It's still early enough in construction that I can change my mind.)

A word about goals, since I know some folks are quite devoted to racing Spindrifts: My wife and I have an eye towards buying or building a cruiser and doing some passagemaking in the years ahead. We've heard some pretty high praise for lug rigs, particularly w.r.t. ease of handling and forgivingness. So I thought that a good starting place to get some experience would be to equip a dink with a lug rig and get a feel for whether we like it. If that goes well, a next step might be a tralierable weekender with a lug rig... and so on. My main point for saying this is that speed isn't quite as urgent to me as it might be to some.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Warnings? Any and all will be welcome.

[Peter HK]

Hi Jon

Not quite a Spindrift, but I have a Welsford Golden Bay dinghy shortened a little to 11 ft 4 in and it has a standing lug with spritboom.

[Scott Dunsworth]

Jon I Had a lug rig on my Penobsot 14 ( I believe it was a called a standing lug ) and it was a nice rig for the boat. There is the dipping lug, standing lug, balanced lug, chinese lug and the solent lug according to Bolger. Bolger said in his book 103 sail rigs, ( I'm going to paraphrase ) basically this rig is a dog. I disagree, it wouldn't go to the wind super tight but respectable. It was easy to rig at the ramp, having a short mast and a yard. I could store the sail rolled up and laced to the yard in a 4" PVC tube with end caps on it. Made it nice for storage and storing on the boat while trailering. The mast was short enough to stole in the boat also.

The only real problem I had was, down wind in a very fresh breeze she would get a bit squirrely, A lot of cat rigs do you know. But I don't know if that was the hull, rig or the person at the helm.

Mine was a traditional standing lug, not as Peter's. He may have been able to get more out of his with the battens and curved leech.

Over all I liked the rig, but don't know how it would be on a spindrift.

Here's a pic of mine, couldn't find one right now of her under sail.

I have the rights to 3 spindrift 12's and will keep one for myself. The lug rig would be my second choice mainly because Graham can get the stock rig without anyother effort.

Scott

[Tom Lathrop]

Sure , you can put a lug rig on a Spindrift but it is not as simple as just hanging it on the mast.  For any rig, you need to get the balance right and a balanced lug may change the Spindrift toward lee helm which is not a good thing. 

[JonSomers]

Thanks to all for the advice.  Tom, that's fair warning both to me and to anyone else who may read these posts in the future. When laying out any rig for any boat, it's important to know the CE/CLR and aim for just a little weather helm for safety reasons.  I'd already done that exercise before I started construction, but thanks for pointing it out since I didn't mention it in my original post.

[PinoyPiper]

interesting idea.. just from the picture it looks like it might just work if the rig is similar to what Peter posted... please do keep us updated... I have an 11N too and am interested to see what other alternative rigs would work