Commander 227

[ebb]

Mike,
I've pretty much been blown away with what you've accomplished on your stretch Ensign! So I've had to keep my flapper shut.

And having read your description of that amazing bowsprit addition, in terms of materials, it is obvious that the bowsprit is integral with the toerail.
It certainly looks like you didn't changeout the original bow fitting - correct?
If so, then you must have added your ply stack in a kind of fork.
In other words you would have had to dap 1 1/2" deep into the flat area the bow fitting occupies by carving away the sides to land the extension. How much original material was removed?
Don't know if that is clear, but can you please explain how the connection was made?

What you have there I never would have conceived. Honest, I have stacks of info on every kind of bowsprit, from spruce, to metal, to carbon, that we might have expected to see on The Princess if we knew it was coming.
I also want a bowsprit on litlgull (A338) and have assumed from the beginning that it had to be a 3' POLE extension. Maybe not, now!
I have made two sprits, one of wood, one of aluminum, and both ended up too heavy in my mind. And cannot be installed.
Your invention is in keeping with the impressive and clean stripped-down day sailor The Princess has become.

I scrolled out a plywood V-shaped concept sprit in the beginning that more or less took its shape off the inside of the toerails, skirted the bow fitting, and terminate 3' outboard. Maybe I should go back to that.
Am persuaded anyway that original ideas, the ones you didn't think too much about, are probably the right ones.

I bought a used screecher from Bacon on impulse - just because I was totally impressed with the concept of the furler being integral with the sail. Don't know much more really, but now I understand it's a Code Zero I should be planning on. Screechers are cut for trimarans.

Why do you believe the sideloads are so light. Is it your sailing location? Plus the length of the sprit?
Do know that what I'm asking litlgull to do is very different from The Princess.
Any bowspeit on a cruiser has to be involved in anchoring.

SO, HOW did you attach The Princess' pretty beak.
Thanks!