I'm really pushed now, planning for sea trials in 4 weeks so...

In article , DSK
wrote:

OTOH, with no expenditure of money or maintenance time on sails &
rigging, the engine can get more attention and thus be prefectly reliable.

No such animal as a perfectly reliable mechanical device. Not even
Mooron's waffle faced hammer.

So - what do you mean by 'pretty well'? You're an engineer - give some
figures.


How about a requirement that the boat make a reasonable & reliable VMG,
with good steerageway & reliable in stays, in the roughest 10% of wind &
water conditions near the coasts where she is to be sailed? Assume that
anything rougher, like say a Gulf hurricane, will be avoided.

Hmmm. Seems the Hill's Badger can do this, and Colvin Gazelles. Dunno
any others but I don't really pay attention.....

For example, it's claimed (and to a large extent I agree) that the junk
rig is easy to handle. But most junk rigs are also small for the boats
they're on... sometimes pitifully small. Well, if it's truly easier to
handle then why don't junk rigs carry *more* sail area, rather than
less?

Lessee..... I've got some data on a Colvin Witch floating around here.
34' LOD, 27' LWL, 14400 lbs displacement.

Junk rig: 613 sq ft or 719 with fisherman.
Gaff schooner: 603 sq or 791
Gaff ketch: 553 sq ft

Only one datum point but either the ketch is *grossly* undercanvassed
or the junk rig isn't too shabby at all.

SARA GAMP is a Colvin Witch with a gaff ketch rig.

Why do we not see large, easily handled junk rigs on racing boats?

Because they'll always lose out going to windwards and racing boats are
specialised animals. Why don't you see a lot of 8' plus draft boats
cruising shoal waters? Because they become reef ornaments.....

Uh huh. And of course, those people are totally & completely unbiased,
and I'm sure they also have many years of experience (and success) with
modern high performance marconi rigs

Shrug. If the rigs didn't work, or worked as poorly as you seem to
think, do you really think the owners would stick with them? Dick
Johnson did 200K miles in his Colvin Gazelle. The Hills have over 100K
miles up on their dory.

I think we're back to the draft factor again. You're cherry picking. If
you put a highly efficient to windward rig on a shoal draft cruising
vessel, it ain't going to work too well. Keep the engineering params in
mind - it's a cruising vessel with shoal draft for gunkholing.

Sure, but if all else is equal, the marconi is still going to be better
at windward sailing.

Yeah, and worse at off-wind sailing. We agree on that.

This one of the basic trade-offs in picking the basic characteristics of
the boat... only after you've settled what you want in the way of LOA,
draft, tonnage, etc etc, should you then consider what is an appropriate
rig.

And in a way, the fact that you don't seem to consider the junk to be an
appropriate rig for a modern light displacement fin keeled racer-cruiser
shows that we are pretty much in agreement on this rig's basic
characateristics

Oh sure. I think it's a good cruising rig, on a hull designed for it.
It's not the perfect rig for all conditions. In fact when I was talking
this over with Tom, he advised me not to build one for sailing in high
latitudes & strong winds due to the rig's weight. His opinion was that
a schooner rig would be a lot better for the places I was thinking of
going, and I probably won't build one of them either so there you go...

Do you insist on a single cut-off point? Personally, I tend to think of
anything over a D/L of 250 as being on the heavy side, and 350 as really
heavy. A lot of junk rigged boats are pushing 400, which is a crusher of
crab crushers.

You mean, like Mooron's boat??????

I simply do not believe that you can build a fully battened Marconi rig
for anything like the price of a junk rig.

Why not? Go scrounge around a boat yard nowadays, you'll find lots of
2nd hand parts & components for such a rig... and darn few junk rig
parts.


Ummmmm, that might be because there are damn few - I hesitate to say
none - specific junk rig parts. Feel free to correct me by listing
some. Therefore, it's a wash at best.

I just did a Google search for used sail batten cars. Guess how many
sites selling them popped up? Nice round number........


heh heh and did you do a search for junk rig parts, too? After all, it
should be a fair comparison.

....... but we agree that there are no specialised parts needed in a
junk rig, so the comparison is nonsensical.

Doug, Marconi sails are more efficient *to windward*, and only then if
in very good condition. As soon as they get saggy & baggy, the
efficiency goes to hell. On reaching & running the tall Marconi rig is
inefficient compared to almost anything else. I can't find any
authority that says different. Quote me one.


Well, I guess the fact that no development class racing boats are using
gaffs or junks or lugs counts for much, then? Shall we assume that these
guys who judge which boat rig is more efficient by the very simple and
direct expedient of racing them against each other, know absolutely
nothing about which rig is more efficient on a race course that demands
approximately equal distance going upwind & down?

What would be interesting would be to:

1. limit draft to say 4' max.
2. limit number of sails aboard.
3. limit the number of crew to 2 or 3.
4. eliminate moveable ballast.
5. boats must recover from a 125deg knockdown
6. boats must be more stable right side up than upside down.
7. boats must sail with varying ballast up to 2000lbs for stores.

These are basic characteristics of cruising boats not racing boats. How
many racing boats could meet them?

This is just as defensible a set of criteria as who goes fastest around
the cans.......

Of course, for cruising, you're not going to be spending equal amounts
of time or distance sailing upwind... but it's still a vital
characteristic IMHO for keeping off lee shores if nothing else. And the
better a boat sails to windward, the wider choices you have of
destinations & the less you need your engine.

Which might have some validity except that we know from Donal that most
people (he knows) motor-sail 80% of the time, and *he* has a marconi
rig!

Look, we're referring to cruising boats here, as that's what the
Gazelle is. That means few people doing boat handling for up to 30 days
at sea. Every extra sail you take means that much less space for other
gear & supplies. Seems to me that you're fixated on windward sailing
ability to the detriment of other factors.


Possibly. OTOH bringing along an asymmetric spinnaker for trade wind
sailing or drifter to get thru the doldrums is not that big a deal IMHO,
and adds very considerably to the boat's performance.

Personally I think a good slow revving diesel using 2 liters/hr and
giving you 5 knots makes more sense.....

In other words, you want to stitch burlap bags together and hang it on a
rig assembled from odds & ends out of a discount plumber's supply? Be my
guest... I won't even fuss when you brag about how easy it is to control!


Come off it. Do you need mylar sails for cruising on a Marconi rigged
boat? They've got better material specs than Dacron. If you're not
using mylar, does that mean you're using the equiv of burlap?

Nope. Would you use Dacron for junk sails?

Probably. Or possibly Sunbrella canvas :-)

If that's what you want, regadless of real wordl factors, then fine. All
I'm saying is that in many cases, the more expensive material is
justified in both better performance and longevity. And good sails are
expensive.

Yeah but there's always a tradeoff point with materials. You go from
excellent to outrageously great with a price differential of maybe an
order of magnitude or more. The differential from crap to excellent
might only be a factor of 2 or 3. If you're racing and can pay the
freight, you pay whatever it costs. Otherwise, there might not be a lot
of point.



... How about
rod rigging instead of 1x19 s/steel? Or galv wire instead of s/steel
wire?


Why not? At one time I was considering buying a boat with rod rigging,
if I had gone ahead should I have IYHO replaced it all (maybe with
galvanized) so as to make it cheaper & more reliable & more cost
effective? A strange way of saving money.

Nope, but you'd need to think carefully about how & when you were going
to get it crack tested and the consequences of any part of it failing
if you were cruising Outer Slobbovia or equiv.


I don't know much about rod rigging, but I assume it's used on hi-end
racers because it's stronger.

Stiffer for the weight. Think of it as 1x1 wire.....

Seems to me like if it's set up properly
then on a less stressed rig on a boat used for cruising, it might last a
really long time.

Yeah. Might. But to my mind there's more than one consideration.

Likelihood of failure over pick a timespan

Cost of regular preventative maint.

Difficulty of regular preventative maint.

Consequences of catastrophic failure.

Pick where your comfort zone is. Racers don't care as long as it
doesn't break before finishing. Cruisers 10 days out of Galapagos
heading for Tahiti might have a different POV.

You've got to replace s/steel rigging wire every 10 years because the
risk of failure increases over time but there's no real good way of
telling visually. People still use it tho and morons like Bob even
think it's because it's structurally better than alternatives like galv
wire. S/steel is slightly stiffer which is an advantage for a highly
tuned racing rig, is all.



That bit of argument is reminiscent of Bobsprit. When you can't refute
the point, go for the exaggeration and hope nobody notices.


You mean like insisting on that comparison of burlap to mylar sail
performance?

Yep, that was one of yours except you used Dacron vs burlap. Heh.

How many production boats have got to that number of
hulls in the water?


Only the ones that have been very successfully marketed... as have the
junk rigs!


Ah. Damn few to none, then, that you can find.


Hardly. Check the production runs for boats like the Catalina 27 or
Hunter 34, which you'll see examples of in harbors all over the place.
Not my own pick of a cruising boat, but they are cheap & readily
available, and people *have* sailed them to all sorts of places.

Shuck, they're getting close to Lightning # 17,000 now. And probably
Laser # 1,000,000 or so!

OK they're production boats with volume sales. But most of them are
water toys not cruisers due to size. The Catalina 27 & Hunter 34 are
big enough tho.


But there is a large and very vocal group of junk rig advocates, few of
whom have sailed as far as have the Catalina 27 guys. There are a few
more who really know what they're talking about, but then in the books
cited, they're insisting on comparing the junk to boats of 30+ years ago
(and only recounting those boat's worst attributes) and pointing to
Jester as though she were a hot-shot OSTAR winner. This is dishonest IMHO.

Dumb too. Too easy to shoot them down. Like Bob in fact.

Weekend is here and I'm going sailing as I only have 4 weeks left in
this year. This can wait till next week or forever, depending........

A well thought out replay deserves a well thought out reply. The funny
thing is, the more we hammer this out, the closer we get to actually
agreeing on most points. The junk rig is just fine if that's what you
want, it's quite appropriate on some boats, and it will certainly get
you from port to port.

I'm probably going to spend 24/7 listening to diesels running for 6
weeks straight RSN. Something nice & quiet like a sailboat would be
much appreciated when I get back.......

PDW