Identify this vintage hard dinghy

[Sanity Check]

I'll bet you can pic up a spar for it from an el toro rig, sizing looks about right, and used el toro sails wont set you back too much.

It's a thought, but I chose a lateen rig because all the spars are about 8 feet long and mostly fit inside the dinghy and my larger boat's quarter berth.

Anybody have a good resource or knowledge regarding the properties of the lateen rig?

I still haven't completed my dinghy project, though I did cobble it together enough to go sailing a few times. For the sail this time, instead of polytarp, I sacrificed an old heavy rip-stop nylon staysail which I thought would be better. Sure does look nicer, but I had trouble getting the little boat to perform upwind as well as I remember it doing.

The rig has two booms, hinged at the front and, as in its previous incarnation, the sail is basically duct-taped to the booms sock-fashion with both ends of the leach screwed at the ends of the booms. It has a halyard, downhaul, leach line and, previously, a topping lift and a reef point. (Never quite convinced myself that the topping lift was useful.)

After reading Phillip C. Bolger's article on how sock-mounted sails promote laminar flow by smoothing the transition between the mast and the sail, I abandoned my intention of cutting sail tracks into my new booms so that the sails could mount with bolt ropes and allow for outhaul adjustment, but instead spent some time trying to work out how I could design the boom hinge so that it would allow the sail shape to be manipulated.

But considering the rig's performance, I now recall that I used to think that when close-hauled, that the sail was actually driving off the leach rather than the luff.

See this picture:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Inhambane-dhow.JPG


The sail is on the "bad tack" you can see that maximum draft is along the leach. I had streamers on the leach of my old polytarp sail and I used to trim so that they'd stream straight back.

Any Sunfish -- or other lateen -- sailors out there? What say you?

[IOR Geezer]

I'll bet you can pic up a spar for it from an el toro rig, sizing looks about right, and used el toro sails wont set you back too much.

[Sanity Check]

Bump.

After a couple of entropic setbacks and much time languishing on my low-priority list, my FRP dink is finally going back together and I'm still hoping for a positive identification of the builder and year of construction.

As I've said the dinghy seems unique in not only having a classic boat-shaped hull but in even sporting an IOR-style "bustle."

My best clue about it is a page from "The Proper Yacht" (1978 2nd edition) which seems to show my dinghy's twin on the fordeck of Treasure, a 46-foot Laurent Giles & Partners Ltd-design cutter. Treasure and a sister ship Sunrise were cold-molded by the famed John Guzzwell. (The photo may in fact show two of these dinghies one nested inside the other.)

The caption of the photo reads in part: "Treasure is a cutter designed and built for long-distance voyaging with a small crew. Among the many features of interest visible in this photograph are the large, well-protected cockpit, the rigid dinghy with handrails that stows out of the way on the forward deck, and reef points in the jib forestaysail which make shortening down easy."

Perhaps someone may know something of this or have a means to contact Guzwell?



Patched and faired hole


Port side looking aft


Port side looking forward


Starboard bustle looking aft


Stb. quarter


Steam bent bow trim


Stern


Stern profile and pinstripe detail

[Sanity Check]

Can we see a photo with the sails up?

Somewhere there is a picture of me sailing the thing, but it won't reveal anything about the dinghy's pedigree because the rig is purely of my own creation except for being loosely based on the Sunfish rig I first learned to sail with. (And I realize now I should have pointed that out in my previous post since I mentioned it was a lateener.)

The boat did come complete with a mast step which is just aft of the bow eye with the mast supported by a plank about 18" from the bow, but based on the workmanship there, I do not assume it was standard with the model.

Over the years, I've seen just one of its sister ships. That one was set up for rowing, and the owner knew nothing of it.

[IOR Geezer]

Can we see a photo with the sails up?

[Sanity Check]

The dinghy - without the leeboard, rudder and lateen rig - weighs in at just under 80 pounds. LOA is 7'6" and it is 44" on the beam. I have never had it on a plane, but I did almost sail it under once when I had svelte passenger sitting in the bow and 15 knots of wind.

[hobot]

Whats it weigh? ....looks like 150#

[Sanity Check]

It's a bit under 8 feet long and has a unique tumble-home shape. I think this was supplied as a tender for a cruising boat in the sixties.