Lug rig alternative for OZ PDRacer.

I have just finished additional drawings for a lug rig version of the OZ PDRacer. Properly designed and engineered spars and sail.

I would like to think I am something of an expert on lug rigs ritted to small boats. I have sailed countless hours with such rigs including weekly club races against conventional boats through to classic boat regattas.

My website has probably the best resource on the web (and maybe anywhere) for setting up lug rigs to sail really well – almost equal to “modern” boats.

So why has it taken me so long to draw up a lug rig for the OZ PDRacer?

The only answer is the time involved!

Timber Requirement
The timber list in this section is a complete replacement for all the mast and boom material in the standard OZ PDR plan.

Experience sailing a OZ PDR with a lug rig.
I did put the much larger Goat Island Skiff sail on one of the Queensland OZ PDRs earlier this year as an attempt to take the maximum sail area record from the Americans (right). I was only game to sail in quite a light wind as the standard OZ PDR mast is too lightweight and flexible for such a large sail area – I was worried about breaking it.

As you probably know the sail area on the OZ PDR is quite large as standard (82sqft) but lug rig was much larger (105sq feet).

The PDR handled the big lug rig beautifully, sailing upwind and down sedately under control and accelerated quickly to quite high speeds in the light breeze. It tacked and gybed reliably as well.I don't think there is much point in going smaller than the normal OZ PDR sail as the lug rig is easy to reef to match the wind.

Advantages and disadvantages.
The lug rig has a number of advantages and only one disadvantage that I can think of. So let's talk about the disadvantage first.

There is an extra spar to make up and I do recommend that it be made round to make best use of the flexibility to get an improved gust response for sailing in strong and fluctuating winds.

It probably adds around 2 to 3 hours to the building time.

TThe advantages are
1.The sail can be reefed easily for different wind strengths and sea conditions. I have made use of this capability by making the sail slightly larger than the original sprit rig. There is no discredit in sailing around with the sail reefed in moderate winds – particularly when you can use full sail in light winds and blow everyone away with the performance.
2.The spars are shorter allowing for easier stowage and cartopping – a maximum of 3.9m (13ft) – three feet shorter than the original rig.
3.Shorter spars reduce the timber cost and maybe reduce the weight slightly.
4.The centre of effort of the sail is a little lower allowing a larger sail to be carried.

The lug rig plans are available to all purchasers of OZ PDR Plans at no cost. Any other PDRacer owners can get a copy which includes all the information for the spars and the homemade sail by purchasing an OZ PDR Plan for $20 from duckflat, duckworks or seawing boats.

Dakota (age 11) builds an OZ PDRacer

Dakota built one of my OZ PD Racers with some help from her dad Larry
It took her three lots of school holidays - about 8 weeks - fitting the work between all the other things an 11 year old has to do.

The middle two weeks holiday it was tooooo cold to do much boatbuilding and they felt a little sad and depressed about the whole venture.

However along came Spring and another school holiday and they finished the boat.

Larry seems like one of those great Dads who can stand back a bit and let someone else find their own way to build a boat - but also to keep the quality up.

The people at the PDRacer Association think that her boat is much nicer than the ones I have built!!!! :-(

It certainly does look smart with the green hull and the white deck.

They took the boat sailing for the first time last weekend.

This is what Larry wrote:

Sunday gave us an opportunity to put it in the water for the first time. A very light southerly (5kts) at Goolwa and away we went.

Although I have no Dinghy sailing experience to compare with all seemed good and the boat went well.

Wind dropped off and we were idle for a while. Then a westerly came in around 8kts and we had a couple of good runs and then spent some time trying to get back to shore with a head wind.

Learnt a lot in that short time and had fun.

We packed up just as a light sea breeze started, thought about going out again but decided we had achieved what we set out to do and headed home ready for our next big adventure.

The full photo series is on my Flickr site.

More details about the PDRacer on pdracer.info

Duck Flat Spring School 2007

The Spring School is underway. About 15 people, around 10 projects.

A couple of days ago it was just a big empty space.

Now there are boats sprouting everywhere. Storer boats, Oughtred boats, Redmond boats, Bear Mountain boats

You can see my pics on Flickr - about 600 of a whole bunch of different details of the building and methods
Spring School Pics