Kuai
Lei
This
is Kuai Lei, at my mooring in Ladysmith Harbour. She is my iteration
of a chinese junk. Why a junk you might well ask . I like the look of
them and the ease of hoisting and reefing sail. How and why did I
design her the way I did?
Kuai
Lei is a cross between long micro and
a chinese junk. I found a picture on the Cheap Pages of a junk hull
that showed a large sliding rudder balancing a large dagger board
which
was fitted just ahead the mast. In another picture, on another site,
the dagger board was again forward of the main mast, between that
and the forward mast. So I thought why not? No keel to get in the
way when grounding and no great lumps of leeboard to knock off on the
dock.
This
was the first go around,
but
the thought of that high stern and the forward daggerboard made me
think that perhaps there just might be to much weather helm or that I
might have to double the size of the rudder.
The
second try was better, at least I thought so.
JimMichalak's writings had turned my mind to stitch and glue for the
hull. Then I realized I had no idea how to develop the panels. All my
building in the past had been the old way, frames, stem, transom then
stringers. Scribing was the way to develop side and bottom planking.
Much
thought ensued but I finally came up with a solution and no the web
was not helpful. To test it out I got some basswood, printed the
developed panels and glued the print to the basswood. I cut the
panels out and made a model. Ha, it worked, what do you know about
that. But then there were second thoughts. Five bucks worth of
basswood is one thing four hundred dollars worth of plywood entirely
another.
More
indecision. So I designed a small dinghy just to test everything out
It's
just a small, two sheet, pram style dinghy based on the sampan but it
became my test bed and yes the panel development did work full size.
More
on the design process next time.
