Sailing Techniques and Tuning for the Oz Goose and Lug Rigs
summary of the learnings in practice from racing our 100 Oz Goose sailing dinghies over the last 5 years. Sail and rig settings and techniques for upwind, downwind
Tuning and Setup
Effects of offset mast or leeboard – Lee helm and weather helm.
Centreboard and leeboard position on small sailing boats. Looking at design factors and how they lead to factors to be considered when sailing. How a lee helm feeling might not actually be lee helm as a truly balanced boat behaves a bit differently.
Learning from racing and coaching in an inexpensive boat
Ok, what are the main lessons we have learned about boat trim and boat speed from racing geese for three years? How to find speed, how to point the boat in the right direction, how to sail in big waves. This is a summary of our boatspeed “secrets”.
Is Oz Goose crew weight sensitive for club racing? Big Small, Single or double handed
My friend and knowledgeable critic Tink on the Woodenboat forum asked if the Goose was crew weight sensitive in our racing. In other words whether light or heavy crews have an advantage in Oz Goose racing for getting the best speed. We now have two years of club racing experience to base our comments.
Videos – Capsize and recovery with the Oz Goose Sailing Dinghy
Capsize and recovery should be a routine part of small boat sailing. It should be practiced until you are confident. This means you can go sailing by yourself any time.
Sailing in Waves with the OZ Goose Dinghy
Sailing in Waves with the Oz Goose. The wide bow causes concern, but here are some photos and videos of what we have found about sailing in serious waves and chop.
Rope Sizes and fittings for the Oz Goose Rigging
he background thinking of this is that building boats in the Philippines means that many parts are not available.
This has forced us to eliminate fittings – it is unlikely that you will find another racing class with as sparse a list as this. And remember … we still want to win races, so this very small list has to work.
2 Videos Rigging a Lug Rig – Oz Goose Sailboat or any Dinghy
A nice video on step by step rigging from our 10 boat build in Cebu last year. It applies to many small boat lug and lateen rigs.
Videos – Knots for Lug Rig Setup – Oz Goose Sailing.
There are just a few knots to learn. Part of the reason is that because we can’t buy sophisticated fittings in the Philippines we have found simpler and cheaper ways that cut out a lot of expense. By replacing manufactured parts with spectra rope as far as possible. In Australia, the USA, Europe, UK it will save you a big bundle of money when you rig your lug rig boat.
Bamboo for sailing dinghy spars – Oz Goose sailing dinghy
Is bamboo a good choice for small boat spars? As a professional designer I can’t specify bamboo because of a huge variation in density, wall thickness and diameter. However I can recommend some guidelines for bamboo for the Oz Goose to help with experiments.
Order Oz Goose sails
Order sails for your Goose or OzRacer or PDRacer if you don’t want to make them. Available “off the shelf” from Duckworks USA – delivered promptly worldwide.
Rigging the Oz Goose, cheapest, most efficient lug rigs for any small boat
The cheapest rigging for a a lug rigged OzGoose no performance sacrifice. Poor availability of fittings in Asia means low cost innovation and fleet testing works for any lug rigged boats learned by sailing and racing the sixteen (now 27 as of last weekend) Oz Geese in the Philippines. Some money saving simplifications and some tweaks that will give a lot more performance to most lug rigged (and other boats). There is nothing unusual in these methods, just a translation of regular racing practice in more conventional boats. Don’t scoff – you can say “I’m a cruiser” – but there are times when everyone wants or needs to get upwind 10 or 20 percent faster.
Substituting aluminium spars on the Oz Goose sail boat
The plans for the various Goose versions show timber spars, butwhat about Aluminium tubing for spars. Here are sizings in Imperial and Metric below. Here is Brad Hickman practicing on Lake Eufala. Video below. I do like the timber spars because they look nice. But you can save a bit of weight on the yard …
Sizing outboards for small sailboats like the PDGoose, OzRacer, PDRacer, Ooze Gooze
What size of outboard for a simple little sailboat.
Gordo has a specific reply.