Greetings all.
I'm more of a drone flyer, making aerial videos for the past five years. Unfortunately drones are getting a bad name. People used to ask me all sorts of enthusiastic questions like, "Where can I get one?" Now it seems the first question is always, "Does that have a camera on it, and, are you spying on me?"
So, I'm moving to a more socially acceptable hobby! I'm now into radio-controlled sailboats, and have recently completed the scratch build of an R/C gaff-rigged schooner built according to the "Irene" plans purchased from Gary Webb at Bearospace Industries. See image below from an ambitious day of sailing on Lake Ontario earlier this summer. Several videos of the boat in action are posted on my YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/user/Zbip57/videos
Gary's designs are simple and robust. The long keel fin with 12-lbs of ballast bulb at the bottom make this a very stable boat. It's currently just a 2-channel rig, one for the rudder, the other for the winch that controls all three sail sheets. It is so stable that I've been toying with the idea of adding topmasts and more sails. I'm fairly confident about adding overlapping flying jibs and another servo control for that. But I've been wondering about gaff topsails and whether it's desirable, or even possible, to re-jig topsails whenever changing tack? What about fitting a fisherman's staysail as well? Can that be tacked?
I made up a couple of short videos with sketches (Vid-1 & Vid-2) of how tacking the topsails might be accomplished (in theory). But I was wondering if anyone here has ever done this? I did some searching through the unbelievably detailed models featured in some of the build logs here. OMG! There are some incredibly talented and meticulous people here! But there don't seem to be all that many actually sailing their creations. What's up with that?
