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Old 07-25-2007, 10:46 PM   #21
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I quite agree and am pleased that you have been able to adopt that life style. Your schooner sounds great. How about a photo here?

Getting back to the topic, what I particularly like with ketch and yawl rigs, aside, is their versitility. In hard weather you can dowse the main and sail on using jib and mizzen in a well balanced boat.

The rig also makes heaving to simpler and more comfortable.

For open-ended cruising I would go for a gaff rigged ketch (or possibly gaff on main and marconni rigged mizzen) as they run well and the masts are shorter.

Aye

Stephen
Hi Stephen,

I agree about the versatility of the rigs. The schooner rig is also very versatile, though we actually would have preferred a ketch. Now that we have a schooner, we're happy to have one though!

We're glad to have found a boat that "fit" our needs though we're doing a major rebuild to bring her back to being a bluewater cruiser. She did the Transpac twice and she sailed from the east coast to the west coast some time after 1937 and before the 1960's. We're not sure what she did along the way, though. Please feel free to visit our boat project blog (you'll have to "sign up" and get a password emailed to you) to see the projects and pictures. Go to www.mahdee.com and follow the links to the blog. There's a very good "history" section on the linked website, too.

We don't have any "sexy" pics of her now so the picture I'm going to try and link to here is of our schooner in the 1930's. She was built in 1931 and she had a gaff fore and sliding gunter main sail until 1937. Her original owner was the commodore of the Cruising Club of America in 1931 and 1932, so she is mentioned as the flagship of the CCA in "Nowhere is Too Far" a history of the CCA written around 1960. She was built as a hybrid gas-electric (yes, electric drive back in 1931) and is thought to be the first gas-electric aux sailboat in the USA. This was written about by her original owner in Yachting in the 1930's and written about by Roger Taylor who included her in the 30 boats he wrote about in the original "Good Boats" book.

She was sold in 1937 and at that time her gas electric hybrid power plant was exchanged for a diesel engine (probably the life of the batteries was 6 years...) and the main mast was extended and the gunter replaced with a normal Bermuda rig. Her boom was replaced with a shorter boom in the 1970 time-frame and she was given a boomkin at the time with fixed backstay. The running backstays remain but are "just in case". This pic shows the sliding gunter with one reef in. It would sit about 8 ft higher on the main mast and look even more like a Bermuda rig without the reef in. This pic was probably taken in MA or ME where she spent most of her time between 1931 and 1937.

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Old 07-25-2007, 11:00 PM   #22
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And yet, some people prefer to spend their lives working in an airconditioned office. This is a beautiful yacht. I can only imagine the adventures you are yet to have.

Love,

A good boat,

Friends,

Good food,

The occasional cold beer,

A cloudless night,

The smell of approacing land beyond an unbroken horizon.

Utopia!
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Old 07-26-2007, 06:54 AM   #23
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Wow!

Why have you not posted this picture earlier? She is a beauty. Congratulations on finding such an icon.

Whilst on the subject of schooners, I sailed in the Swedish navy's topsail schooner FALKEN. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the ship and her sister GLADEN, they are built in steel but are based upon the fishing schooners used onthe Grand Banks a centuary or so ago. Wonderful ships, very stable and forgiving and versitile. The only problem we had was stopping them! I once entered port in a full storm, running free the ship was making 8 knots under bare poles. We needed a large tug to stop us and assist with berthing.

Happy days and apologies for having digressed from the original topic.

Aye

Stephen
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Old 07-26-2007, 10:03 AM   #24
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Hi,

I had a yawl (from the Dutch "Jol") the sail on the jiggermast provided balance and steering.

I sailed on a Ketch (from the Dutch "Kits") - (Med to Hong Kong) the sail on the mizzenmast provided power and a triatic stay for the Hf Antenna.

Richard
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Old 07-27-2007, 02:01 PM   #25
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Our mizzen spinnaker was basically a symmetrical spinnaker, remember this was a long time ago, which was tacked down to the windward deck on a pennant attached forward about half the distance to the mast. The sheet was run to a block at the end of the mizzen boom and the mizzen itself was doused. Reaching was more traditional with a large staysail, rigged pretty much the same except tacked further inboard. If the mizzen backwinded the staysail, the mizzen was dropped or reefed. One problem with this arrangement was that the man on the helm couldn't see all that well. His job was to make sure we didn't jibe. If a jibe was necessary, it meant taking down the mizzen spinnaker or staysail so the boom could come across.

I have seen roller fuller staysails for the mizzen on short handed boats such as Beowulf (76 foot Deerfoot) handled by 2 people.

Good luck with it.

Lew
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Old 07-28-2007, 04:58 PM   #26
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nausikaa View Post
Wow!

Why have you not posted this picture earlier? She is a beauty. Congratulations on finding such an icon.

Whilst on the subject of schooners, I sailed in the Swedish navy's topsail schooner FALKEN. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the ship and her sister GLADEN, they are built in steel but are based upon the fishing schooners used onthe Grand Banks a centuary or so ago. Wonderful ships, very stable and forgiving and versitile. The only problem we had was stopping them! I once entered port in a full storm, running free the ship was making 8 knots under bare poles. We needed a large tug to stop us and assist with berthing.

Happy days and apologies for having digressed from the original topic.

Aye

Stephen
I didn't have much reason to post the pic earlier, I guess.

In regards to sailing schooners--I bet you had lots of fun! These days, sailors just don't get the opportunity to sail in differently rigged vessels. Its a shame. In San Diego, CA (where we are right now), we are lucky to have a wonderful Maritime Museum to visit which includes a couple of actively sailed vessels. They take guests sailing on the CALIFORNIAN (a replica of an 1847 revenue cutter) every weekend. At this time, the STAR OF INDIA (presently rigged as a barque), and the ROSE (a 7/8 scale replica of the original 18th century ship ROSE, which was re-named the HMS SURPRISE as it was used in the movie "Master and Commander" under that name) are sailed occasionally. Also in San Diego is a reproduction of AMERICA--the schooner that the "America's Cup" was supposed to have been named for. She is commercially operated and runs sailing harbor cruises.

Also in San Diego, there is a sailing club for people who own boats built prior to the 1950's. There are members with numerous different kinds of rigs--since it is often the interesting rig that gets one to purchase an old sailing vessel. From small lateen-rigged boats to huge schooners, with ketches, yawls, cutters, and sloops, all the rigs are represented at club events and races. Many are gaff rigged, too.

I would encourage anyone who doesn't already own a boat to investigate the benefits of the different rigs before automatically buying today's favorites, the Burmuda-rigged sloop or cutter. You might find that you'd love to cruise with a yawl, schooner, or ketch rig--once you've investigated the benefits. The same goes for having a combination of gaff fore and Bermuda main sails on a two masted vessel.

As mentioned, our boat was built for a gentleman who was the Commodore of the Cruising Club of America (www.cruisingclub.org) way back in 1931 when the boat was launched. He was a fanatic about details and safety and often sailed alone or with his wife only. He did several things to make sure this schooner could be sailed by a single person alone. One of those things was to use a sliding gunter rig (its a "vertical gaff" that looks from a distance like a Bermuda sail) on the main mast--to ensure that the large sail could be doused quickly by just one person. For good or bad, the gliding gunter was removed from the rig by the next owner and we probably won't replace it for years to come as it involves modifying the mast, having new sails made, and probably getting rid of our boomkin and fixed backstay for the sail area to work out properly. Of all these things, getting rid of the "safety" of a fixed backstay is the thing that keeps us from changing back the rig to the original. We'll stick with the Bermuda rig for the time being...

Enough digressing...
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Old 04-18-2013, 02:28 AM   #27
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Lew, you covered it well. Just think of the Mizzen as a sometime thing.
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Old 04-19-2013, 07:44 PM   #28
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OK... I sail an S&S Yawl for a living, and I will pass on what little I know:

As I understand it, the entire idea behind a yawl or a ketch was economical. As early sails were heavy canvas, it required strength to handle a large wet canvas in a storm (read more people), so a split sail design evolved to allow fewer crew (read less paid folk), to handle the same amount of sail in similar conditions. In the early days, so few boats were for recreation. Most, if not nearly all, were for commerce of one sort or another.

So think of your yawl rig as two parts of one whole! Anything you do to either effects the balance as if it were one big main... except that you have more options! Running Jib and Jigger (Fore & Mizzen) in heavy wind is quite effective reefing. If you reef the foresail, you most certainly want to reef the mainsail, so that explains your reef points!

Imagine that you reef the main, but do nothing with the foresail... You will not sail as close to the wind. If you do not use the mizzen to windward, the same applies. Downwind is another matter... Depending on conditions, the mizzen will only help to try and blow your stern around.

Study all of the forementioned information in this thread and enjoy the many options that your rig allows you to employ!

David
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Old 04-19-2013, 10:00 PM   #29
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David--you're right about split rigs reducing crew sizes. That's the basis for both ketch and schooner rigged boats. It is also a good way of getting lots of sail area "low" which works well for heavy displacement boats, too. On the matter of yawls it is a bit different. The design was favored for a singular reason (by S&S especially) and that was to beat a CCA racing rule. The rule said that sails set on a mast that was aft of the rudder post don't "count" as sail area in the same way as sails set on a mast forward of the rudder post. Therefore, the yawl came into favor.

I know a man with two 44 ft Naval Academy yawls (designed by Luders) . He wanted to install an engine in one so he unstopped the mizzen mast to place the engine below. Famous America's Cup sailor Dennis Conner said the mizzen acts like a brake on that boat. So he took off the mizzen but he kept the other yawl as it came. It ended up that the first yawl (now a sloop) became the faster boat. You can read about it (see page 3) on this .pdf document just look for the story about yawls Flirt and Frolic http://www.amss.us/sitebuilderconten...albapril09.pdf
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