Kiao Fang has many other attractive qualities, but what defines her is this: she is a Junk-Rigged boat. For those in the junkrig community, what follows will be stating the obvious - skip forward if you will. But if you have never sailed a junkrig, here are some of the reasons we like her so much.

The rig is effective, with a lot of canvas up where you need it thanks to the stiff full-length battens. That stiffness makes the rig more and more effective to windward as the weather gets up, and with much less force needed to control it than on a Bermudan. The forces on the sails are distributed and spread in such a way that sheet work is light - no winch cranking needed. Kiao Fang has two light winches, but they are rarely used, and then only for topping up the halyard. Even then, we tend to haul up by hand, and neither of us is young. The same light forces mean that the rig is raised on keel-stepped unstayed masts, with all lines run back to the cockpit. Junkrigs self-tack. This isn't a fancy add-on in the way of deck-mounted sheet-slides: it is inherent in the rig. The workload is therefore far less than on a standard sail. The sail is semi-balanced, so that gybing is softer and easily controlled. Reefing is easy. The sails self stow on the boom, and if you really need to you can reef from full to hauled right down in - literally - seconds. (Mind you, there will be a lot of rope to sort out if you do it this way, but the squall won't knock you over while you tidy up). There is no standing rigging to break and replace every few years, and no bowstring forces trying to drive your mast through the deck. There are no multiple sail bags, hanking on, or deckwork when it's rough. The sails are forgiving: a ripped sail panel will stop at the next batten, so you tie that panel off, lose a bit of area and crack on. But the stresses on the sail are low anyway, because of the multiple batten and sheet connection points.

The side benefits are that with a doghouse added to the cockpit setup, you can stay nice and snug and safe. There is much more locker space, because sails aren't stowed below. The boat therefore stays drier, and a bit of attention to how the anchor is stowed and where drains go produces a really dry little ship. If you are living on her, stowage, comfort and dryness matter.

Kiao Fang was built in 1977 as number 5 of the Sunbird 32 class. You could buy these boats as Bermudan rigged, or single or schooner - rigged junks. Kiao Fang has a Hasler style schooner rig. She was sold to a lady in Belgium, who sailed her out of Nieuport until about 1995, when she was put on the hard until we bought her in 2000. We moved her to Glasson Dock in Lancashire, and began an extensive refit, (see below). The boat is on her second set of sails and her second engine, the latter being installed just before she was stored ashore in Belgium.  Glasson was her home port for a few years, and her home waters were therefore the Irish Sea, Isle of Man, Ireland and the south-west of Scotland. We then took her via Cork to Portugal, and sailed her from there: Povoa is great for the Spanish Rias, so we stayed.

Here are some drawings of Sunbird 32's when they were first built.