In article . com,
Frogwatch wrote:

...

Anyone tell me how a vessel equipped with lanteen sails goes about
without dropping its sail and resetting it on the other side.
Many thanks

Having built and sailed two small sailboats with LATEEN rigs, I can
answer. You tack just as you would in any other sailboat. Both spars
of the sail (boom and gaff) are one side of the mast on either tack.
This does not matter at all because the pportion of the sail
immediately adjacent to the mast is very small and low compared to the
huge portion of the sail that is far from and undistorted by the
mast.. A Lateen rig is a great way to get a huge sail on a small boat
without using a tall mast.

It's pretty much the same way of sailing as a standing lugsail - you go
about but leave the sail where it was. It means that the rig is less
efficient on one tack than t'other, but that's something that you just
live with.

Of course, with a big enough crew you /could/ drop the sail, swing the
yard to the other side of the mast and re-hoist. This is the same process
as is done with balanced lug rig - it gets a boost in efficiency in
sailing at the cost of going about more slowly - and of carrying many
extra pairs of hands.

As the other poster said, it's a great way to get a large sail area on a
small boat. Just be careful gybing.

--
Andy Breen ~ Not speaking on behalf of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Feng Shui: an ancient oriental art for extracting
money from the gullible (Martin Sinclair)