A Project Named Clancy - XII. Spars and Rigging

The plans for Clancy call for spars made of aluminum tubing.  This was probably done for a number of reason--ease of sourcing for the amateur builder, the ability to take the mast apart for ease of transport, the durability in livery fleet use, etc.  I could not bring myself to sully my new wooden boat with aluminum tubing, and thus settled building them out of Sitka Spruce.  Reading up on it, it I realized that sizing wooden spars for adequate strength and rigidity if more art and experience than science and mathematics.  After several efforts to figure it our myself, I lay the problem before a well-known boat designer friend.  Based on his input, I settled on a 2 1/8" square cros-section for the mast up to the top of the gooseneck, tapering to a 1" square section at the masthead; the edges of the mast above the deck would be rounded over with a 1/2" router bit.  For the boom, a 1-1/2" square section was used, with each end tapering to 1/2"x1" over the last 2 ft.  As mentioned in previous posts, the modification to the mast resulted in changes to the mast tube (square plywood "tube" instead of PVC pipe) and the sail (external sail track instead of a sleeve).

The mast is around 16-ft long, so one Saturday, I put the roof rack on the car, took the ferry to Port Townsend, and brought home a nearly 17ft long 6/4x6 chunk of beautiful Sitka Spruce from Edensaw Lumber. 

The first step was to run the board through the surface planer a few times.  Planing a 17' board is a bit of handful, and required taking the planer outside to find a space over 34' long; you need 17' on the infeed side and 17' on the outfeed side to avoid running into anything.  My garage can barely hand the first 17ft!  

I then marked the masts and booms on the board and roughed them out with a circular saw.  Yes, mast and boom were both plural.  In the coming pictures, you will find evidence of two Clancy's worth of spars being made at the same time.  Could this indicate that I'm planning another Clancy in the future?  Stay tuned.

Dressing spars is a delight.  Unlike the gooey epoxy and fiberglass work inherent in plywood boat construction, spars are all saws, planes and sandpaper.  After rough cutting the tapers in the spars, I used a power plane, followed by a belt sander and then a low angle block plane to bring them right to the pencil markers.

Next, the edges were eased with the router, using a big roundover bit.

After sanding smooth with 220 grit sandpaper, multiple coats of varnish were applied.  For Clancy's spars, I experimented with TotalBoat's Halycon water-based varnish.  Application was ok (I like the flow of the oil-based varnishes that I'm familiar with), and the final color after several coats was passable (not quite as deep amber as with the usual products).  On the bright side, drying/recoat times were closer to an hour, rather than a day for oil-based, so all 5 coats of varnish went on in an afternoon, rather than a week!  It is a good product, though I will likely stick with the old fashioned stuff on future projects.

With the spars shaped and finished, it was time to install the hardware.  I went with a Racelite small boat gooseneck that I bought from Duckworks.  I had wanted a 1/4" pin, but due to all the COVID-related supply-chain issues, they only had 3/8" pins. 

The boom end get a hole of the same diameter....

...so that it slides over the pin.

The sail track gets screwed into the aft face of the mast.  I was able to space the sliders on the sail just right to be able to get by with a single 12-ft length of sail track (sail track is devilishly expensive).

Since the sail must now be hoisted instead of slid over the mast, I had to add a block to the masthead for a halyard.

A quick test fit of the sail ensured everything was lining up properly.

I rigged the boom with a 2:1 outhaul.  The outhaul is deadheaded to eyestrap on one side of the boom, led through the clew, to a fairlead towards the end of the boom, and thence back to a jam cleat.

The boom also receives a pair of blocks, one at the clew end and one mid-boom to lead the mainsheet to the cockpit. 

The 2:1 boom vang consists of a block with a becket attached to a padeye on the mast with a stainless steel snap hook.

The block on the boom is shackled directly to a padeye.  The vang is tied to the becket on the mast block, run up through the block on boom, back through the block on the mast... 

... and then is lead through a fairlead to a jam cleat at the front edge of the cockpit.

This picture shows the details of the traveller.  The traveler is deadend at a fairlead on one side of the run, through through a fairlead on the opposite side and thence forward to a jam cleat at the aft end of the cockpit. The block for the mainsheet clips on to the traveller with a stainless steel snaphook.

Here you can see the whole path of the mainsheet.  The sheet led away from the cockpit via the two blocks on the boom, through the block clipped to the traveller, and then terminated on a becket on the after of the aftermost boom block.

The rudder is mounted to the cheeks with a big stainless steel bolt, with a wingnut on the end.  A pair of small boat pintles are mounted to the rudder and gudgeons are bolted/screwed to the transom.  A small tang on the transom keeps the rudder from floating off when the boat is in the water.

Two big deck plates seal up the area under the foredeck, while a thirds in installed in the aft bulkhead to seal up the transom compartment.  These watertight compartments provide flotation when swamped and can carry your lunch or be stuffed with foam for flotation, depending on your preference.

Rigged and ready....