Certainly not in the way of saving time. In the way of saving money, well, you only safe a little if you do it right but at great expenses in time. That is just not efficient as spending the same amount of hours on a second job will earn you lots more then you can possibly save.

So yes, I think the answer is that you are correct.

Homebuilding if for people who want things to be just the way THEY want it and enjoy the journey of having made things themselves. Or people who create new classes where there are no commercial builders yet !




Yes, that would be the case. Especially if you would forget about making it wider. If you do then you can still use the standard Taipan beam (but now of greater length) and replace the rear with something like 80x2 6068 T6 or 6005-T5. The first can be had from a broken Taipan mast the latter was used in the past for A-cats and some still have these laying around; I know AHPC has a few.

Other then that buy a spinnaker package and a selftacking jib setup. The latter will really open up the trampoline. Then you are ready to go. You'll accept some speed loss compared to modern F16's but not more then 1 or 2 minutes per hour bouy racing. Sailing enjoyment will be much the same. Also note that the Taipan is not really suited to carrying lots of crew weight. Without a raised beam I would stop at 145 kg (320 lbs) combined. Well, when racing that is; for recreational sailing it will carry up to 180 kg quite easily (400 lbs). The main hit is that the hulls will sit relatively deep in the water and slow the boat down. I sailed my boat (Taipan hulls) up to 205 kg (3 adults on board) and still had (recreational) fun.




See the diagrams below.


First picture,

Triple cascaded 12:1 downhaul.

Blue is 6 mm swiftcord (nice on the hands)
Red is 2.5 mm dyneema
Green is 3.0 mm dyneema with a hard outer mantle (not D12 or whatever) that is UV and abbrasion resistant

The green line simply ties off to a saddle on the backside of the mast. Others use a sail hook here. With my sail the little block is secure to and inside the sail, so I only run the green line through it and tie it off to the other side ; with a slipknot and a few hitches as security. The slip allows for easy derigging even when LOTS of force has been on the line. I'm very pleased with this setup. Just make sure the gooseneck doesn't have any sharp edges (mine had in the beginning !)

Second picture,

Red in second picture is bungee cord. Blue is still the 6 mm swiftcord.
I got SS rings fitted to the inside of my sidestays and the swiftcord runs through them.
Then I got two small blocked stitched to the underside of the trampoline (The once in the red line). The blocks on the transition from blue to red are free hanging. The small blocks in the blue line and the ends of the blue line are just tied together and the thickened ends are slid into the trampoline track of my mainbeam. As a result everything can be just slid out, untied and disassembled for transport. Leaving only the stitched blocks to the tamp and the blue line + everything else ties to the mast. My trampoline is secured to the trampoline track by sliding a 5 mm rod through the tunnel that is stitched to the front of the trampoline. The rod is longer then the tramp is wide so the blue lone and blocks are held away from the gap by that rod.

The internal downhaul keeps everythign clean and tidy (no maintainance required even over many years) and the excess line system under the tramp is easy to access and rinse. I prefer it to any system that runs inside the mainbeam.


Third picture,

Here the blue line is actually my spinnaker sheet. The grey coloured line is the downhaul line that was depicted as blue in the other pictures. There are also some other lines in this picture that you can ignore; for example the ones wrapped around the boom. These are just there for emergencies out on the water. I think this picture was taken just before or after a long distance race or a tour along the coastline.


Interesting note, when I'm on full downhaul then the sail touches the boom (5 inches travel AFTER the sail is already pretensioned when fitting the downhaul = about 2 inches). And the green line sings like a guitarstring. Made me worried initially, but I have never replaced the line after it cut itself on a sharp edge in the first few months. Everything seems up to the task and is on the boat for many years.

I hope this is clear.

Wouter