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CHECK OUT the sailing
canoe pages, by Dan Miller and yours truly, for
information on Rushton's batwing
sails. When more info arrives the descriptions will be
more elaborate.
And there will be info on making
your own batwing sail. In the meantime, check out these
diagrams of gunter
sails.
(Update: I've made a prototype batwing sail and tested
it. It seems to work very well. I've taken some photos and
when they come back I'll scan them.)
And here is Robert Laine's great
little application which will give you panel shapes for
homemade sails (...arrrgh, Windows only). Sailcut4 is
for three- and four-sided sails. Sailcut8 will take
care of junk sails, and with a little care, batwing-style
battened sails.
http://home.wanadoo.nl/robert.laine/
But note that both Batwing sails and Chinese lugsails do
not require cambered panels. They can be one big flat piece
of material. Of course cambered sails will have more power
when sailing to windward.
I MADE the junk sail and
the small mizzen sail (called a dandy by
oldtimers) on my canoe out of polytarp. Here's a link to my
Junk Sail Tutorial:
Making a Junk
Sail
I've also built a sprit-boomed leg of mutton sail,
a sharpie-style battened sail, and an experimental
battened lugsail with bendy airfoil battens. I'm working
up a small crabclaw sail of the sort that proas use.
How to make a small sharpie
sail (this one is really a good performer for all its
flat simplicity):
How to make a small balanced
lugsail:
One of the most interesting
small-boat books I've read is the obscure Sea-boats, Oars
and Sails by Irish yachtsman Conor O'Brien. A discussion
of some of his ideas can be found at
this link. While I don't agree with his hatred for
boomed sails, he has some very well-worked-out
simplifications for "small boats" (meaning 20 or 24-footers)
and I wish he'd had a wider audience for some of these.
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