May 2026  Custard

By Martin Brown

Custard is a Wanderer dinghy.  We needed a bigger boat as the kids were growing fast and the Wanderer was the biggest dinghy I could hope to pull up the slipway on my own, and pretty stable. She is also bright yellow which is a plus :-) 

I did play with the original Bermuda rig but this was too much hassle, particularly when sailing with young children. The biggest problem with junk rig is the pain of doing the conversion – after that it is all positive.

First step was a free-standing mast. After much playing with Qcad I came up with a Split Junk Rig sailplan which allowed the mast to be in the original location. The new mast is aluminium tubes –about 1kg heavier than the original but shorter and with most of the weight at the bottom, so is much easier to raise, particularly with the Wanderer’s tabernacle. It is worth noting that aluminium tubes are made to a tolerance of around 1mm so there is no guarantee that they will fit inside each other. Mine did, so I didn’t need to go to the fallback plan of making a timber topmast. 

I built the wrong version of the sail (wrong layer in the CAD file - oops) and had to amend the plan to suit. However, it works well and the balance of the boat is perfect.
The sail is made of thin polyester with the aluminium batterns and the yard in pockets. The second panel down is coloured to reflect the JRA logo. Camber is around 10% on all panels – it was made in a hurry so I didn’t have time to reduce the camber up the sail. The thin fabric takes up a good shape in light winds. The shape is close to a NACA aerofoil with the panel edge shape generated by a spreadsheet calculation.

It is surprising how critical a few mm on the edge of the panel are to the overall shape of the sail.

Sail control is via Yard Hauling Parrel – to pull the halyard towards the mast - and Throat Hauling Parrel – to pull the front of the yard down. The sail hangs from the yard with very little load.
I put too much angle into the jib part of the sail so it collapses a bit early. She will pinch into wind under the main area, even with the jib collapsed. One day I’ll make a revised jib. We’ve had complements from other boats on her speed into wind, although only when my daughter is in the helm – she’s slower with me on helm!

Some people argue that junk rig isn’t needed on a dinghy. For me, junk rig makes the dinghy much less likely to capsize and far easier to control. The kids are much bigger now so Custard feels much smaller. However, even though she is now rather overloaded and cramped, the junk rig makes her possible to sail safely. I just reef down until everything is under control, even if we’re not moving very fast.

Recent research has focused on camping on board. She is far too small for me to sleep on the floorboards so I’ve tried making a pipe berth slung between the oars. The last test resulted in everything including me collapsing on the floor so further work is needed...

[A detailed description of Custard’s conversion and SJR sail is in a two-part article published in JRA magazine #82 and #83 (Feb 2020 and June 2020)  Ed.]

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