Quote:
Originally Posted by jmen24
"...I have a mast and sail from a sunfish..."
|
A sailing canoe was my first sailboat...
...so I can say with confidence—"Start Over".
Though I had a lot of fun with it (and never tipped it over), it was fully designed by Grumman: Even then, the Grumman kit only had the sail
size right, and had to be re-engineered everywhere else!
You need about 45 square feet of sail, and the Sunfish sail has 75. A Sunfish sail would be fun "off the wind", but returning home would be a chore—and sometimes impossible.
The rudder was an adequate size, but the original Grumman kit had an unmanageable tiller. I converted to a design of my own using a long wood tiller with a swivel-and-notch for changing tacks (centered in the boat). The push/pull design (which I had in my sailing kayak) is adequate—but only OK. There are times you need a lot of muscle to operate that design.
There's a lot of help on the Internet, but to get all the necessary parts "operating as a team", you have weeks of experimenting ahead.
The above appears to be about the ratio of sail-to-leeboard you need, but still—I'd begin with a kit.
