Adding a Sail to a Plywood Boat

It wasn't long after finishing the boat that I decided I really wanted to try sailing it!  I knew while building it that I wanted the boat to be able to accommodate sailing and even a small outboard or trolling motor.  Although I've always found sailing fascinating, I don't really know anything about sailing - much less how to sail at all.  In order to proceed I did a fair amount of reading online about sailing and boat building.  I found a couple plans, recommendations, and rules of thumb that I planned to follow.  From my reading about homemade boats and sailing I found that I needed 3 basic things in order for a boat to sail: mast and sail, rudder, and a keel or daggerboard.  Here are some pictures, more on the explanation to come.

These pictures are of the mainsail.  The mast and boom are PVC and the sail material is poly-tarp.  The boom is attached to the mast by two pipe mounting clamps that are connected with an S hook that I bent down.  The other parts of the rigging are eye hooks that I drilled into the PVC.

        

The pictures below show how I fixed the mast to the boat.  The baseplate is a piece of plywood fixed to the hull of the boat with epoxy and screwed down.  The PVC fitting for the base of the mast is a 2" shower drain screwed down to the baseplate.  The mast mount fits into the shower drain and is fixed to the deck of the boat with a pipe clamp.  The mast slides into the mount and a pin secures it into place.

 

The next part is the daggerboard and trunk.  The daggerboard was made with 3/4 in plywood sealed with epoxy.  The trunk is a simple box also sealed with epoxy.  The trunk is made so that the front bench can still be used when in rowing mode.

Here is the rudder which is removable.  The hinges are made of PVC and pipe clamps (creative, I know).  Also, here is the daggerboard in position.

Lastly, my wife hand painted the name on the starboard side of the bow.

 Overall, the boat sails just OK.  I think this is most likely the combination of my inexperience sailing (actually, no experience at all) plus inadequate wind/poor sail design.  When there is a strong gust, and I have the sail just right, the boat travels surprisingly fast, so I think that is a success in itself.