After a LOT of trial and error (mostly error) I'm happy to say that my adventure island's jib is flying nicely. Well enough that I
now lay claim to owning the worlds fastest adventure island . Of course all challengers are always welcome to meet me down at the Dunedin causeway.
The aluminum frame attaches to the bow with bungee so it can flex and not stress out the hull. So far it's working very well. The jib's tension is adjustable with the halyard line and I don't tighten it down much which gives a softer luft (a bit of a curve). For some reason, this has worked out better than I expected in the fact that it's also a benefit in downwind sailing. I wasn't expecting this at all. I'm no longer planning on adding a spinnaker. In most downwind angles, the mainsail deploys on one side and the jib appears to catch the wind from the mainsail on the other side of the mast. I'm not sure what this is called but it does add to my downwind speed.
Bungees are temporarily being used on the hakas to experiment with different angles and positions of jib lines. It's been very educational and I'll use that info to eventually position permanent cleats and guides.
When not in use, the jib furls and folds neatly onto the aluminum frame. Deploys professionally when launching, I attach one jib halyard line to the mast topper block and up it goes with minimal effort. Same with stowing it when you return from sailing. It took a bit of trial and error to get an efficient system.
The other day in jib testing, I pulled up alongside a 16' waverunner (with no jib). Their sail had a large boom and the sail was a lot larger than the AI. As we sailed side by side and talked, I then decided to yank my mirage drive which was covered in weeds. For a moment my AI was faster than the waverunner. As I pulled ahead I said I had my parking brake on.
All in all, we were closely matched with the waverunner a tad quicker overall.
Haven't put a rear stay line and not sure I will. I think the key is knowing what conditions to deploy the jib and what conditions to keep it furled or just unfurl a small slice. Also will continue to work on the mast topper. I'm still using a hybrid of my mast topper with bearings but may eventually go to a design like Bob (Fusioneng) uses on his TI. So far I've experimented with about 7 different mast toppers and 3 completely different furlers. It's been a lot of fun.
Since the design changed so radically in testing, I took the video down until completely finalized which should be the middle to end of September