building & sailing a Super Sunfish

Nico posted this video on the Sunfish Forum – his father built the wooden Super Sailfish in their garage, and they sailed it on the Knysna lagoon in South Africa (beautiful waters!).

sunfish pvc dolly – handle upgrades

I love when I get feedback from fellow Sunfish sailors after they build their own Sunfish PVC dolly, more or less following the Sunfish PVC dolly plans that I posted several years ago. often they mention little tweaks here and there, but now Mark has made some major improvements and we both thought it would be great to share them with the rest of the Sunfish sailing community. here are a few of his modifications:

• modified the handle attachment to use hitch pins to allow the handle to be removable (major upgrade!)
• adjusted the axle design so that instead of a long threaded rod, you can use short bolts instead
• the axle design changes allow you to widen the dolly width (so as to not be limited by the length of threaded rod you can easily source)
• changed to all stainless steel hardware to allow use in saltwater environments
• added bunk supports to keep the dolly bunks from dragging

Mark put together a very thorough blog post that outlines his ideas and directions on how to tweak my dolly plans to incorporate his changes. if you’re interested in his improvements, check out his blog post and his very detailed instructions.

Mark’s handle connection and bunk supports

Mark’s hitch pin handle connection

on the wings of a Sunfish

I found a woodworking and sailing creator named Mark on Instagram that has been experimenting with building a wing foil for his Sunfish.

photo by Mark Palmquist

The wing is designed to skim over the water like a horizontal water ski. If it dives, the wing will still have a lifting force due to its curved upper trailing edge. The speed record for a sunfish is around 11 knots in 20 knots of wind. Beyond that bow gets too bouncy and your live ballast can no long keep the hull flat. The wing creates lift on the leeward side forward of the center of effort lifting the hull. Hopefully the wing won’t come loose. It’s basically clamped on.

photo by Mark Palmquist

Mark has two videos posted with the wing foil attached to his Sunfish – the first was very light winds, so not really a good test, but the video below was higher wind. (click thru to watch the video on Instagram…)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mark Palmquist (@mark.palmquist)

Results: a hydroplaning wing works much better on a skinnier, faster hull. The current wing shape is not ideal. Fluid separated on the upper surface. It needs to be optimized for underwater lift, which means having the foil lower and changing the profile shape. Hydroplaning only works well at speeds above 11 knots and that’s the speed limit of the sunfish. Therefore a sunfish would benefit more from a hydrofoil since they work at 8 knots.

sounds like mixed results, so I’ll be curious to see if Mark goes back to the drawing board to tweak the foil shape… or if he maybe has moved on to tweaking his ideas on a sailboat that is a little sleeker than an ol’ Sunfish.

sunfish class flags

in the recent “Windward Leg” – the official newsletter (now email only) of the Sunfish Class, they announced that Sunfish Class flags are now available to purchase online:

Over ten years ago the International Sunfish Class Association World Council voted to make the Official Sunfish Class Flag a white field rectangle with a red Sunfish logo on it.  If your club and/or fleet is using something else, it’s time to get up to date before your next race or regatta. 

The flags are 24″x36″, with a red Sunfish on both sides facing the flag hoist (i.e. towards the pole).  They are made of white Dacron sailcloth with red insignia cloth for the fish.  The hoist is webbing with two #3 brass grommets.  The price is $39.99 plus tax, shipped free to USA addresses.

you can purchase them from Windward Rail‘s etsy shop – Sunfish Class flag.

and if you haven’t joined the Sunfish Class, now is a great time to do so!

locating the Sunfish logo

a blog reader reached out to me recently to ask how to locate the Sunfish logo on the sail if you had bought a non-class legal sail that didn’t come with a logo (from Intensity Sails or APS for example). I previously blogged about making your own Sunfish logo using insignia cloth.

the Sunfish class provides a sail diagram to show where sail numbers (and country letters) should be placed, but no dimensions are shown.

I got out some really old Sunfish sails, that would have been original manufacturer supplied sails, to measure a few different locations to see if there was consistency over the years with the “official” or class-legal sails.

I also measured my APS racing cut “practice” sail that I made a logo for to see how it compared (bottom right in the photo above, larger photo below).

it seems that the basic summary is that the Sunfish logo usually is placed in the 2nd panel from the top of the sail, about 48″ or so from the top of the sail, but you can probably use your best judgement as you place it. the nose of the Sunfish logo was typically about 16″ from the front of the sail.

 

old style Sunfish rudder repair [video]

Shoreline Sailboats just posted a great video showing some of the steps and process of converting an older style Sunfish rudder to the current rudder system.

Small Boat Restoration also has a good blog post “sunfish rudder conversion” about this same upgrade, with a lot of photos of the process as well.

old style rudder (photo by Small Boat Restoration)

new style rudder (photo by Small Boat Restoration)

all 1972 and newer Sunfish are equipped with the current “new” style of rudder, so this only applies to those of you who have currently, or are looking to buy, an older Sunfish.  back then, the manufacturer of the Sunfish was AMF, and they released a write-up with the procedure to upgrade the rudder.