Have been visiting my folks and found two pictures of my first proa. The pictures are taken at the Weymouth speed sailing championships the day after the 1987 'great storm'. I arrived at the week with a very under developed craft with a sort of square rig with poles attached to the foot. The sail moved forward during a shunt using the poles.The position the yard was attached to the halyard was also controllable during the shunt. The hull was asymmetric and steering by weight shift. The helm suspended from a trapeze.

The asymmetric hull's CLR was far to forward for the rig. Also I had great difficulty getting enough luff tension and considering the conditions overnight the sail was cut into a triangle. This was used as a jib with the tack hauled down to the the bow, shutting was by hauling the tack to the new bow. This was a very violent operation with a completely slack luff and storm force winds.

The craft was able to sail upwind in this configuration but failed to complete the speed sailing course, very good fun though. I was only a naive 23 at the time.

One interesting point about the craft was that it had a single beam connecting the hull and outrigger, the mast and stays holding it all together. Weight steering from a trapeze worked well.

However I learnt the hard way how far forward the CLR moves forward on an asymmetric hull and now favour symmetrical hulls and board style lateral resistance control for 'Western' rigs