if i understand wright this rig will be similar to optimist ?
No.
In fact it is very much different in the way the forces are transmitted from the rig to the boat itself and that is one of the main advantages of the lugger rig. You can get the sail to be a tight as a drum but not really load the mast up in bending. The latter is what allows very good sail control and very lightweight construction. This is turn allows the rig to be very big without encountering any building constrains.
So in some aspects it may look alot like the optimist rig but in the important aspects it is very different. It does share that property with the optimist rig where it is aerodynamically more efficient on one tack compared to the other. But this difference is really not that big; it is very much acceptable especially for simple homebuid rigs.
Additionally the lugger rig with end the top of the sail into a triangular shape which is rather good to cut down on tip vortices, the optimist rig is VERY square like. Again the two rigs are very different from eachother in several aspects.
But the best feature of the lugger is that in its "balance(d) version" the single downhaul tackle sets both the luff tension and basic luff tension (and therefor twist) and it can also be run squarely downwind where the extremely simple mainsheet almost lays perfectly horizontal. Upwind the mainsheet increasing become vertical and add leech tension that is also converted to luff tension by the spar protruding more passed the mast then the boom. This make the leech stand up and keeps the luff taught (no flutter). As such this rig can be trimmed pretty well for downwind, reaching (tight but lots of twist) and upwind (tight and tight leech) using only 1 downhaul tackle that it set once and forgotten and a very simple mainsheet. The trick to this is the placing the downhaul tack and thus implicately the length that the boom protrudes in front of the mast. This place can altered on the beach to get the right combination for the conditions of the day. The rest is all pretty much automatic. You don't have nearly as much control on an Optimist rig.
Again , when build and set right the lugger rig is a pretty attractive rig as it combines alot of control and thus pointing and speed with an increadibally low stressed and easily build setup. When done with sailing you just drop the sail, put spar and boom along side eachother and place the mast section next to them and roll the lot in the sail itself and you are ready to go. The sail can stay permanently attached to the spar and boom. If the rig is not too large in area (say below 10 sq. mtr.) then you don't even need a halyard. You can just fix the spar to the top with some flexible joint then pretension the rig when it is lay flat on land (pull the free hanging boom down with downhaul that is attached to lower mast section) and step it into the support structure in or on the hull. This can even be done while on the water.
Again, it was all these advantages that made the lugger rig so popular with smugglers. It was such a practical rig with surprisingly good sailing characteristics (pointing and speed). It has only one real drawback and that is that is has a favoured tack and an unfavoured tack aerodynamically. But for longer stretches this was not an issue as the crews would just drop the sail very quickly and hoist it on the other side of the mast to make the new tack aerodynamicall favoured. On smaller lugger rigs, below 10 sq. mtr. I guess, this was a job of a few seconds. For much shorter legs like in a race the aerodynamic disadvantage doesn't seem to be large enough to be really an issue. In this way it is just like the optimists.
Wouter
