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Building the 'Piragua' - continued:
This shows the sprit after sixteen siding, pretty close to round.	Some careful planing and sanding and the sprit is ready for varnishing.
Despite 'borrowing' a lot of bits from other dinghies there was still quite a lot of work rigging and getting everything shipshape for the first sail. 09-01-2012: Here we are on the slipway ready to launch.	The first sail is only being delayed for a few pics...
Here from a different angle...	The snotter (white) and halyard (red, Vectra) are on clam cleats and the downhaul on a cam cleat. Later, snotter and downhaul controls will be re-routed to the mid-seat to be handy for the helmsman - right now the first sail is more important!
About the first sail: Piragua is a slender 15-footer, reasonably light at about 80kg rigged but without crew. (That's me at 100kg). The hull is single chine with fairly deep vee forward and a flat run aft. Moderate wind conditions to start with let me familiarise myself with the controls and characteristics of the boat. Not unexpectedly she planes easily. Transition from displacement speeds to planing is barely noticable and from around 5kn she quickly accellerates in gusts. The GPS showed bursts of 8.2kn and sustained 6 and 7kn runs off the wind. No toe straps were fitted yet which limited hiking out during the test, so I learned that heeling gunnel down to waterline in gusts while beating she finds a stable position. Heeling stops and as soon as the gust passes she recovers. Overall she has good performance and enough excitement while still being a simple boat without expensive rig etc.

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