Proa building blog
Proasis proudly participated in the international climate strike on September 20th.
250000 people marched in Berlin, 1.4 million in whole Germany and multiple more around the entire world!
We are amazed and grateful to be part of making environmental protection and conservation a mass movement!
As promised in our last post we managed to the sail this week!
As sailcloth we got a strong PE sheet (also known as polytarp). That’s exactly the sort of stuff the people in Micronesia using for there sails.
Exceptionally we bought it new but spend only 40 bucks.
We hope to setup the sail for test purpose during the next days. Read more in our next weekly update!
Maybe an odd way to start building a boat, but the very first part of proasis will be the rig (naval term for mast, sail and all other parts belonging to them). Why? That’s a bit of a story:
Originally, proasis was supposed to get a free standing carbon mast (free standing means no shrouds to hold it up) with a soft wing sail on it (see a video of something similar here).
Aside of the not very sustainable carbon part we never got happy with the design:
We thought about many workarounds and fancy designs but eventually came back to the (Marshallese) oceanic lateen sail!
Proofed for centuries on the pacific, the biggest ocean of our planet. For us the best sail possible:
For the spars we were lucky to get tons of old windsurfing mast for free by our sailing club:
The windsurf mast were simply transferred into mast and booms and laid out to test the geometry for shunting:
Next week we will get some cloth and sew the sail. Stay tuned!
Now, after the 1:5 model proa proofed our general concept by amazing sail performance it’s time for something in real size!
To get an impression of what the living conditions on proasis will be we made a full size mockup of the accommodation compartment in the windward hull. In manufacturing and design, a mockup is a scale or full-size model of a design or device, used for teaching, demonstration, design evaluation, promotion, and other purposes. It is probably best known from the automotive industry for show cars, but is an important part of yacht design too.
Our mockup taught us a lot about usability, ergonomics and structural design of the cabin.
As you can see, its a quick and dirty construction from scrap wood and paper boxes. All of that was recycled by us and therefor for free!
