Sviveling Static Sails

Inspired by the DynaRig, designed in the 1960s by the German engineer Wilhelm Prölß, we decided to equip the shiplet with likewise sviveling, but static sails. We will use radio controlled servos to manually rotate the konvex profiles within our pivoted mast supports, also to test detrimental positions and situations. To start with, we use some carton stripes to roughly shape the design of the sails.

Then we 3d print the slightly curved horizontal spars and glue them on a 3×3 mm carbon fibre square pipe. For the exact positioning of the spars we have build a simple positioning device. We use two extra square pipes and pins for the exact alignment of the parts.

Timber plank with six kerfs to position the spars on the mast.

We will bond the spars with 0,3 mm Polystyrene sheets. Finally each sail will weigh roughly 75 grams.

Weighing of a mast with spars and un-cropped plastic sheet.

After cropping the Polystyrene sheet with a guillotine and before glueing it all together we add a nice Ohanda.One.01 sticker to it.

Plastic sheet and sticker with position lines.

Then we put it all together. To facilitate the assembly we built a mold with fitting curve.

And voila – we are (almost) ready to sail. 😉

The shiplet’s deck with mounted sails (portside).

The shiplet’s deck with mounted sails (bow side).

For future versions we plan to use freely rotating wing sails. But that will be a different story …

Jürgen Neumann