We brought you a story a while back (Spar Wars) from a disgruntled former Carbospars customer. He had a bad rig, bad experience and bad things to say. Good, we said; let's hear it. Now he has a good rig, good experience, and good things to say. Hey, sometimes we even print the good stuff. Good times.

I thought I'd send an update on our progress since the report on our problems with Carbospars and the Aerorig. It took well over a year to sort out our many, many problems. Now the Aerorig is chopped up and disposed of. Carbospars is defunct. And we have the brand new rig.

Ted Van Dusen did a great job on our mast, boom, bow sprit and a Hoyt boom (which is not installed for a couple weeks yet). Robbie Doyle helped with a lot of the calculations, recommended adding the sprit and built the new sails. The main is the very first use of 8 oz Ocean Weave and, besides being incredibly strong, only weighs about 150 lbs. In total, we have reduced the weight of the boat by almost 10% and the savings was almost all in the mast and boom.

I feel very fortunate to have discovered Bruce Schwab and Ocean Planet. When we discovered that our Aerorig had stress cracks and defective laminate I was left in a real quandary. The whole boat was, of course, designed around that rig and was not designed for a mast farther aft or for chain plates and standing rigging. All the mast reinforcement is in a massive star configuration in the deck and forward of the keel. Ocean Planet just happened to have almost the same configuration, close to the same sail area, same righting moment (his is in a 14' keel; mine is in the washer, dryer and dishwasher), and same mast height. Ocean Planet was also designed, like the Barbara Ann, to be sailed in all conditions by one person. The big difference is that Ocean Planet was designed totally for speed, Barbara Ann is designed totally for comfort.

The new rig sails great. Barbara Ann used to be tender and would hobby horse in moderate seas due to oscillation in the Aerorig. The boat is now nicely stiff and well balanced. It has a narrower and much more definite groove. When you get it trimmed right the boat pops out like a rocket.

All sail controls on the new rig are able to be done manually. There's no mainsail furling, just a Dutchman sail flaking system, which also is working great. Oversized Antal cars make the sail drop in seconds. All of the rigging is designed for minimum force handling. The main halyard is two part and lead to an Anderson 46 hydraulic winch on the mast. The jib has a soft luff and the is pulled up with a 4-part halyard. I'm planning to add a Doyle UPS as a downwind sail next season. Bruce suggested the Hoyt boom for the jib as a solution to limited space for a track to make the jib self-tacking. In keeping with my desire to be able to do everything from inside the pilothouse in the middle of the winter, both the main sheet and jib sheets are double ended and lead to hydraulic reel winches. The reel winch for the main sheet is left over from the Aerorig setup. We added a new reel winch for the jib which I found from Dockmate in Florida. It was hard to find a small hydraulic winch with enough force. This one is normally used for pulling power boats into the dock. It pulls at 3000 lbs and only weighs about 14 lbs.

All in all, the rig handles well with no power assist. With the use of the hydraulics, it's at least as automated as the Aerorig was in the best of times.

We're currently based in Boothbay Harbor at Carousel Marina for the next week or so and then we'll be going up to Rockland and Bar Harbor. We may also stop in Portland for a few days to sail with Bruce.

I'm finally a happy sailor.