Hi ThomL and others, 

  This looks like it might be a really old post, but I'm building my EPP and I have the same question: the instructions suggest fitting the mast square to the forward seat, which is tilted towards the stern by 'a small angle'. I guess 5 degrees or so. Has this worked well? Any fist-hand experience? 

Thanks, Hugh. 

Hi ThomL and others, 

  This looks like it might be a really old post, but I'm building my EPP and I have the same question: the instructions suggest fitting the mast square to the forward seat, which is tilted towards the stern by 'a small angle'. I guess 5 degrees or so. Has this worked well? Any fist-hand experience? 

Thanks, Hugh. 

"John Harris gave me some info suggesting that the angle between the front seat and the mast should be about 86.3 degrees give or take 5 degrees.  That's roughly 90 degrees if I'm not mistaken."

I love that 'roughly'  stuck in there after the pitch given to tenths of a degree....

The pic you gave a URL for is deceptive due to boat heeling as well as having been taken from well ahead of the beam.

Still, 5° isn't much past a 1:12 pitch (1" change in 12" run) which is roughly 4.76°... and I think it's reasonable to believe that mast just might be raked aft about that much.

Were I in your position I think I'd try for maybe half that, see how it works.

I copied out the line drawing from the Eastport Pram design page, pasted it into Irfanview image editor, checked to make sure the waterline was horizontal (it was), drew a narrow rectangular selection along the front of the mast between the masthead and the gun'l, did a little trigonometry, and came up with less than 1 degree aft rake, in other words, the drawng shows it nearly plumb to the waterline.  That must be enough to keep it from looking goofy, which it doesn't, to my eye.  The visual effect is somewhat masked by the fact that the luff of the sail lies forward of the mast, moreso at the throat than at the tack, in this rig, so it isn't as big a deal, visually.

If the sail was a leg-o-mutton or some other sort where the luff of the sail was attached to the mast, the mast would need a few degrees of rake to keep from looking like the rig was tilted forward.  It would also need some taper to keep from looking chunky, also not so important (or even desireable, functionally) with a lug rig.

Functionally, a bit of rake will help the sail to naturally "fall" toward the centerline when the wind isn't pushing it out, a helpful thing if it isn't so overdone, and the boom isn't so heavy, that quys are needed to hold the boom out in light air.

.....Michael

Yeah, Michael I forgot about trying that same exercise!

Upon reading your post I did something similar but with Adobe Illustrator.

The line drawing's waterline did need a teensy bit of counter-clockwise rotation (I think all of 0.2°!) to match a true horizontal rule. Then a true vertical over the mast's exposed portions showed it pretty solidly dead-nuts plumb!

(I'd post a screen-grabbed image of what I saw but my luck getting images to show here had been so dreadfully lousy I'm discouraged enough as it is....)

Somehow I don't believe there's a hard and fast amount of mast rake implied in the specs. It's up to the builder/user/sailor to determine if some arrangement whereby a rake can be put onto the mast they're going to be running with is appropriate or not. Easy enough to work up something with a wedge or shim maybe, but watch your fingers!

I built my EP about 4 years ago, but I seem to remember sweating that detail for a while.  I think I drew the mast in CAD, then tilted it the recommended number of degrees and measured the horizontal distance/component (sorry, I think in vectors).  I then tied a plumb bob to the top of the mast and used that distance to establish the rake.