JOY

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.