Do I correctly assume that ducking sufficiently to clear the lower yard in tacking and gybing is painful for you?  Maybe taking a knee on the bottom as the lower yard passes overhead would help?  That's what I do in my Passagemaker Dinghy, which is now equiped with "portable" side seats I knocked together so I don't have to sit on the bottom.

Unless you're making your own sail (so you could deliberately cut it with a higher clew), I believe there are limits to how far you can stray from "optimal" attachment points for the halyard on the upper yard and downhaul on the lower before it might effect the set of the sail some.  To make the clew higher, you're going to need to attach the halyard to the upper yard higher up (more toward the peak, farther away from the throat) in order to get the clew to be higher, in effect "tilting" the sail and yards more forward relative to the mast.  This may effect the way the sail "stretches" out between the yards (they are meant to flex a bit as the downhaul is tightened), and thus shift the point of maximum draft in ways that might effect performance, particularly in stronger winds when the downhaul needs to be set up more firmly to keep the sail from going baggy.

This is all theory, of course.  This might be a good question for Doug Fowler (CLC's sailmaker), who knows a lot about what makes a lug sail work.

Hoisting the whole business higher on the mast, even if you have to build a somewhat taller mast, might be a better way to go.

.....Michael

Thanks for the response Michael. It's appreciated. Yes ducking is painful.

On balance, I agree that building a taller mast could be the way to go. There will be a pefromance penalty, but at least I can go sailing. And the next owners will likely be able to duck, and can cut the mast back to design length if they so wish.

I've just found a youtube clip of a CLC Skerry which about 35 seconds in shows the type of seating setup which would work for me in a CLC Peapod. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrqOqPnGg0I   

Hope the link works, it's the first time I've tried to link this forum.

(another) Michael.

   Getting old is a bitch.  I'm lucky I guess that I'm still in pretty good shape and limber at 60, but I know it's coming.  I will say that the skerry is sensitive to the weight of the mast so if you decided to try a peapod or skerry w/ taller mast to get boom clearance, then I might suggest 50-100 lbs of sandbags in the bottom close to or forward of the daggerboard for ballast.  My skerry gets much less bouncy w/ 2 aboard, but that's my wife which doesn't happen often.

>  Getting old is a bitch. 

Consider the alternative and don't complain :-)

> 50-100 lbs of sandbags in the bottom

Consider a carbon fiber mast. For the Skerry, a 12-foot mast should be on the order of 4 pounds.

Laszlo

I've been playing around with ways of sailing the CLC Peapod with my bad back. 

Until the plans are released, I can't be sure, but I suspect I may be able to  incorporarate a small footwell similar to that inThe Guider.    

This, plus a 2-3" high helming cushion, may enable me to sit comfortably either side a little aft of amidships, and enable me to pivot from side to side as required.

I'm eagerly awaitig the release of the plans!

Ha! I've been pondering Laszlo's above comment about using a carbon fibre mast. 

Searching the web, I found a very useful 3 part tutorial on building carbonfibre spars for small sailing boats, by none other than Laszlo himself.

See http://www.morocz.com/BoatBuilding/mast01.htm

Nice one Laszlo!