Needlessly Overcomplicating Things.....Again.....

Due to the fact I've not had a boat in a few weeks I feel the urge to build one. As Blue Flower is a long term project I've decided to knock out a Herb McLeod designed One Sheet Skiff with a sail rig to finish out the season and have a boat for the first WMHBBA messabout in September. The OSS is an amazing little craft. It was in fact the first boat I really wanted to build but it's 9" freeboard didn't seem to make much sense in the rough waters of the inland northwest. But my experiences on Lake Union have convinced me that it may yet hold some promise.
As we work on the build of the S/V Pica sail math and center of effort have taken center stage. Knowing that I want my OSS to have a sail I needed to see if anyone had done it before and save me the math. Someone had! Enter the Cygnent, a sailing version of the OSS mounting a 25 sq.ft spirit rig. Looking over the rig I thought "I can do this". So I set up the polytarp and did it!

Huge tarp staked out and ready for cutting.

This used to be the rain fly for a massive tent. Now it's sail material. The plan for the rig looked deceiving enough. There was ample direction. So I sketched the plan out and went to work. I didn't have a measuring device long enough for some of the edges, but with a simple string compass managed to get the lengths and angles close. Now I am a cheap, lazy, bastard at heart so when it talked about running rope around the edges I simply decide since I had grommets I'd use those. To cover the edges I decided to save time and not use the carpet tape as I have in the past. I simply ran duct tape down all the edges and called it good. Will it last? Long enough I think. If I really like how the skiff sails I'll simply make a better sail down the road.
As I've mentioned the plans call for a spirit rig. Well I'm not a fan. So after getting all the grommets in place and the mast cut down to size I was trying to figure out what to use for the spirit. And the more I looked at it the more "Gaff Rig" kept popping up in my head. Now Andrew Linn has a plan for a single halyard gaff set up. When I tried (and failed) to put a gaff rig on the Wawona I used this set up and it seemed to work fine. I still had my gaff jawed yard and thought, why not? So I may be working on the smallest gaff rigged vessel in all of the inland northwest. It may be needlessly over complicated but I like it. And if it doesn't work I'll sell it.
So here is the sail in all it's glory ready for a boat. Needs some tweaking but I have high hopes my gaff rigged OSS will be the hit of the 1st Annual Frenchtown Pond Messabout!