K1 single-handed keelboat

'tis true, keelboats are only good for making cups of tea and taking the dog for a sail.

Still ... got to sail something when the knees get too stiff for trapezing ... and wouldn't be seen dead in a soslow.

Bizarre.

But to get back on topic, one thing I noted during my test sail that i haven't yet mentioned is that I was tacking downwind at the same true wind angles and getting very similar apparent wind angles as I get on the V3k, which I suppose means that the speeds were comparable.

OK, it was pretty light, and a lot of boats respond to sailing off the run in lighter winds, but I think it does indicate that even without a kite the very narrow waterline beam (on a par with a development Canoe!), long waterline length and low wetted area give a very respectable performance compared to Illusions etc. And that was with a makeshift rig and keel bulb, so the production boat will be rather slippery in displacement conditions.

How it will cope with stronger winds and waves will be very interesting to observe. Will it be Moth/cat-like and carve a neat furrow, while going very quickly? I suspect it might, which would be very entertaining. I just hope the mainsail chord will be short for easy gybing, or that keel might be seeing a lot of action!

see the K1 movie   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R2FNxRw8uQ

Originally posted by laser193713 why is he tacking backwards, and why sail in the river? Why not venture out to at least Cat Head or round to Sposa? Boat looks nice on the water though, how much weight is there on the keel? the rig doesnt look that big especially in the river where there is never a lot of wind and if you're already hiking in that wind then how does it fair in proper solid wind?

Facing aft: too many years Firefly sailing?!

The rig looks plenty big for one person to me. It's at least Firefly-size, and there you have two bods hiking to balance it. The idea is that the keel will be used to balance the rig in normal sailing like a yacht (unlike, say, F15's which should be sailed upright - even if many aren't!), so you can expect to see these boats sailing properly, heeled, and the boat in the vid is sailing normally, not hard-pressed as a normal dinghy would be heeled at that angle.

Originally posted by laser193713 why is he tacking backwards, and why sail in the river? Why not venture out to at least Cat Head or round to Sposa? Boat looks nice on the water though, how much weight is there on the keel? the rig doesnt look that big especially in the river where there is never a lot of wind and if you're already hiking in that wind then how does it fair in proper solid wind?

Yes, tacking backwards probably due to too many years Firefly sailing...

The keel weighs 60kg on the prototype and will probably be about 65kg for the production version.  The prototype mast is very stiff and with just over 11sqm sail area (8 main, 3 jib) the boat heels readily in a breeze, but as Medway Maniac notes its designed to be sailed heeled anyway.  The breeze was quite solid at times when the video was taken and at 73kg I'm at the lower end of the crew weight range.  Still confident though that with the rig sorted on the production hull, which is slightly wider too, stability will be about right with this sail plan.

Re launching and landing, the keel can be raised and lowered easily with the 6:1 block and tackle, even with the mainsail up provided the boom is not on the centreline.  At the Hamble I raised the keel before sailing up the slipway - its probably more stable like this than most single-handed dinghies with the board up.  Needs about 6 inches more depth  for the trolley than a typical dinghy and pulling it up the slipway was easy.  We'll try to get some video of this up on U-tube soon and venture out to some waves too.