Yellow Legs - Junk Rigged Olive Oyl

This is an extended version of the "Boat of the Month" article for the Junk Rig Association. It includes discussion of the leg-o'-mutton and lug sails - which was out of scope for the article published by JRA.

Yellow Legs has had 4 different sailing rigs, two of them were junk rigs.

I should start this essay by stating that I am a trailer sailor and prefer to sail shallow draft boats on small bodies of water. Bouncing around in the middle of a large open body of water holds little interest for me. I have done enough of this type of sailing when racing to know that I prefer to sail close to shore gliding along in shallows where I can observe the flora and fauna of the riparian zone. When out camping I seek protected corners or shallow reed beds to overnight. Areas that a larger boat could never enter.

OliveOyl is a Jim Michalak designed 15-foot flat bottom sharpie with a bridge deck extending into the cockpit. The bridge deck greatly increased the comfort of the sleeping area compared to my previous Michalak 15-foot sharpie named AF3, which frankly, I found a bit claustrophobic where my head lay. OliveOyl although the same length as the AF3, is a much larger boat being fully one foot wider at the chine.

I named my OliveOyl build Yellow Legs after one of the many shorebirds that visit our region. The boat was painted with the same colours as this shore bird’s plumage and legs. In this case brown topsides, a white belly and bright yellow bottom. Almost all my sailing is in lakes that are part of the Canadian Shield. In this region the water is clear and cool and I have no need to use bottom paint as there is no marine growth on a hull that has been kept in the water all summer. For visibility, in the case of a capsize, I have taken to painting the bottoms of my boats with vibrant colours, in this case OHSA yellow.

I modified the OliveOyl design eliminating the two sliding hatches for a removable walk-through slot top. The plan also called for the mast to be hinged on a tabernacle and to carry a 91 square foot balanced lug sail. This is the second area where I parted from following Michalak’s plan changing the design so that different sail plans could easily be fitted.

When I was building the boat, I had the 96 square foot leg-o’-mutton sprit boom sail from my AF3. This sail was still in excellent condition, so I decided to use it rather than the balanced lug rig called for on the plans. The design change to a slot top also included solid one-piece mast that is offset to one side of the walkthrough. With a slot top the mast partner is bolted to one of the beams that run down either side of the walkthrough and in this case the mast was stepped to the bottom of the boat on an adjustable mast step. Multiple evenly spaced holes were drilled in the slot top beam to allow the mast partner to move fore and aft in four-inch increments. The idea was to permit easy adjustment of the mast position to accommodate different sail plans. Finer mast position adjustment could be made by changing which faces of the mast partner blocks were used. Orange colored foam earplugs were used to seal the unused holes keeping them from becoming mud dauber wasp nesting sites.

Both Michalak’s AF3 and OliveOyl use a leeboard that in functions as a centerboard that has been offset to the exterior of the boat. For the this off-centerboard to function properly it should be placed at the widest beam of the boat and the sail is then positioned so that the center of effort is aligned with the back edge of the board. In the case of the leg-o’-mutton sprit boom sail this positioned the clew well aft of the transom. I noted two problems that result from this aft position of the clew. First the sheet would tend to hang up on either the rudder head or the corners of the transom when coming about. To counter this problem, I changed the shape of the rudder head which helped but I still had to be very diligent in not allowing any slack the sheet when coming about or jibing. Second when releasing the sheet in a strong gust the clew of the sail would occasionally dip into the water tripping the boat and on one occasion this almost caused a capsize. I should note that I had 2 accidental capsizes when sailing the AF3 due to this problem both of them when sailing solo. I have never had an accidental capsize with OliveOyl as it is a more stable hull.

On the AF3 there was another capsize that occurred when a friend and I were both standing on the cuddy roof adjusting the sail. This capsize was due to not really thinking too much about what we were doing….

On the smaller AF3 the 96 square foot sail could be difficult to manage in higher winds and would often be reefed. On the larger OliveOyl the 96 square foot sail never overpowered the boat and it often felt like more sail area was needed. I next replaced this sail with a balanced lug sail of 120 square feet.

For trailer sailing the leg-o’-mutton sail can be rapidly set up in a few minutes as sprit may be rolled up into the sail and then bound to the mast by wrapping the halyard around the sail and mast holding the two together. The problem with the sprit sail when trailering is dealing with the long mast. in this case a 22-foot mast on a 15 foot boat

Also, with the lightweight leg-o’-mutton rig Yellow Legs, when carrying 100 pounds of lead ballast, would self-right after a capsize. This is not necessarily a good feature if the boat should decide to sail away from you before you are able to reboard.

I next built a canvas balanced lug sail, I used cotton canvas as I was becoming aware that polyester sails would long outlast any of my boats which are built from local softwood. A cotton sail could be composted at the end of its life whereas a polyester sail eventually becomes landfill. The downside of canvas sails is they have to be stored in dry conditions to prevent mildew and thus cannot be stored on the boat for the summer.

The balanced lug sail worked better in both light and stronger wind compared to the leg-o’-mutton sail as it had more sail area and is easier to reef.

The balanced lug sail was not quite as close winded as the leg-o’-mutton sail but on all other points of sail was superior. Also because of the position of the clew I did not have the problem of the sheet getting caught on the corners of the boat. I must note that the leg-o’-mutton sail was professionally made from Dacron sail cloth and the balanced lug was owner made from unbleached cotton canvas. I would expect that a professionally made lug sail of Dacron sailcloth should have produced a sail with better performance than my canvas sail. With both sails made from similar material I expect that the difference in the close wind performance would be even less than noted.

For trailer sailing the balanced lug sail is a bit slower to set up and stow compared to the leg-o’-mutton sail. The difference in set up time is only a matter of about 5 minutes. Most of this time difference is due to setting up the lazy jacks.

Long before I started building Yellow Legs I had purchase a copy of Herbert Hasler’s and Jock McLeod’s Practical Junk Rig but always felt the designs were too complicated for a small boat that is being trailer sailed. It was a junk sail design published in Duckworks Magazine titled How to Make a High Performance Polytarp Junk Rig by Mike Mulcahy of North Star, Alberta, Canada that was the basis of my first junk sail. Mike was using a junk sail on another Michalak designed trailer sailor and came up with the suggestion of using nylon straps connected with plastic clip buckles for rapid attachment of the baton parrels. The first junk sail was as large as I could make from a 11.75 x 14.75 foot 8 ounce canvas drop cloth and it measured 105 square feet. Mike Mulcahy advocated using a gurney flap on the trailing edge of the of the sail to increase the lift. (For those who may be interested, the Wikipedia article on the Gurney Flap will provide more background.) Mike also called for darts to be sewn into the sail over which the battens are placed to give the sail some shape. I wrongly thought that the cotton tarp, like my canvas lug sail, would stretch more than the polytarp, and decreased the size of the darts. What I did not know at that time is that the individual parts of a junk sail receive so little stress that the material would not stretch at all. The result was a sail that was essentially flat. Being cotton and always liking the look of tan bark sails I decided to mix burnt umber into the water proofing. The only problem is the burnt umber would not stay in suspension in the water proofing liquid so in the end the sail took on the patina of a bad mid ‘60s tie dye job.

The sail worked fine off the wind but when close hauled the performance really fell off compared to the lug sail. Also like the leg-o’-mutton sail it felt like more sail area was needed.

It was about this time that I met local junk sail enthusiasts Kirill Lisovskiy and his spouse Natalia. This got me thinking that I could make a better Chinese lug sail for my boat that what I was currently using. Covid hit, and as a project to keep me occupied, I built my second junk sail of 120 square feet. It was made of individual panels with 5% cord at the mid point of the panels. To simplify construction only two panel shapes were used. The same edge curve was used on both the parallelogram and triangular panels. The sails were laced with polyester cord to the spars and batons which is a rather slow assembly process. [On my latest build I have used electrical quick ties which makes for rapid assembly and do a better job of keeping everything tight.]

This sail was much better close to the wind than the flat junk sail. Basically, its performance is very similar the balanced lug rig. To evaluate the up-wind ability of each of the 4 sails, I would use my smartphone to make a GPS tracking by first running directly down wind as indicated by the pennant flying on the mast head. I would then do a 180 and tack up my down wind track. I have attached one recording of the second Chinese lug rig so you may better understand what I am describing.

The biggest problem with this rig is the 19 Kg (42 lbs) weight of the sail bundle. This rig was heavier than the previous three sail rigs but again I did not have any problems with righting the boat on a capsize test. The problem for this 74-year-old was lugging the heavy sail bundle of yard boom battens and canvas down to the boat. In hindsight I might have used a lighter polyester cloth and smaller dimensions for all the spars and battens.

It was my admiration for the docile characteristic of the junk rig but not wanting to deal with the weight of the sail bundle and mast for Yellow legs that brought me to designing and building my 3.6 metre Micro-cruiser Omakayas whose sail bundle weighs a more manageable 12 Kg (27 lbs).

Mike Mulchay’s poly tarp sail:
https://www.duckworksmagazine.com/06/howto/junkrig/index.htm

Wikipedia Gurney flap:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurney_flap

Mike Mulcahy’s version of Jim Michalak’s Phill’s Boat:
https://www.duckworksmagazine.com/06/projects/philsboat/index.htm

OliveOyl plans:
https://duckworks.com/oliveoyl-plans/