But two outriggers are still a bit simpler, sailing-wise, so eventually I ordered a pair of Balogh inflatable outriggers from Mark.

I didn’t buy the other hardware, so I made new heavy-duty akas, redesigned the old aka holder (this made both outriggers foldable, if need be, say when you’re approaching a jetty, or when entering a narrow stream. More about these outriggers in a later installment.

The pair of Klepper leeboards were eventually replaced by a single home-made leeboard, both broader and deeper than the short plywood pairs it replaced.

The new leeboard has a metal tip to protect it from scratches when it hit bottom, or rocks, but is essentially a thin piece of plywood, surrounded by balsa sheets, as it proved far easier to form the balsa than the plywood. It has then been covered with West Systemsepoxy and then painted black and red, a few times. It is a little over an inch thick, and has a fairly good hydrodynamic ‘wing’ profile, if not perfect. The trailing edge is sharply cut off, as I shy away from flutter. It isn’t unusual that leeboards, daggerboards, and centerboards do flutter (The Pauch folding kayak’s leeboards ‘sing’ at the least provocation, users have told me.).

Very early we added a very roughly made mizzen, which we soon found essential in bad weather, and even better when we replaced the leeboards with our own. So while the main rig might be left in port we usually brought the mizzen, the leeboard, and the outrigger.

For awhile we sailed with the Klepper jib, the mizzen, the Klepper leeboards and the Klepper mast, and it worked quite well downwind, but not very well tacking. Upgrading to a Klepper XXL (same frame as our AE II, but some extra bits and a new, two feet longer, skin), things got even worse. Straight downwind was OK, but not much else.

We also tried the tiny Long Haul spinnaker we had, which was well made, but a bit too small, and had all the bad characteristics all spinnakers develop if you let them. Most likely, it will be used as the basis for an asymmetric spinnaker one day.

Back to the sail: So the Gunter rig wasn’t quite to our liking, and as a few others in the US and the UK had tried junk sails in combinations with canoes and Kleppers, I kind of thought it would be just perfect. And it was also time to say goodbye to the original, taped-together mizzen, as it was falling to pieces.

But I needed to learn more, so I studied what I could lay my hands on, not least the bible when it comes junk rigs, PJR (Practical Junk Rig), and van Loan’s ‘Design and build your own junk rig,’ plus exchanged a few letters with junk rig users, and read what I could find on the internet.

To stay on the safe side I decided to make the new sails about the same size as the old rig, that is around 4 sq. meters (44 sq. ft), or possibly a little more.

The Klepper rig had a nice mast, so we’d use that, but we elongated it a bit by adding a top spar. As the junk sail would likely prove to be heavier than the Klepper sail rig, and a junk mast usually is used unstayed (if mechanically possible), I added a massive piece of aluminium a foot above and a foot under the deck. You’d need more than a hurricane to bend that.

If I had gotten van Loan’s book first I’d probably followed his designs more closely, but I didn’t, so the end result is pretty close to ‘Blondie’ Hasler’s ideas.

I did a few sketches on paper, and tried various approaches, till I found something I could live with – the details would have to wait till I got some suitable canvas. The new mizzen would be a batwing sail, made to look like a miniature junk sail. A bat-wing sail is a bit like an umbrella: either up, or folded, out of the way. It eventually turned out to be slightly smaller than the old, which wasn’t exactly planned, it just ended up like that.