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Best 34 foot blue water cruiser
On 23 Mar 2004 01:46:47 -0800, (Frank Maier) wrote:
Wa
nna go through the Chinese-fire-drill laundry list to do the same
preparation for a ketch, flying as many as five different sails? Hurry,
hurry, Hercules!
Well, the idea is to have furling on the most used sails: staysail and
jib. In heavy weather, you have the mizzen and a staysail, or maybe
1/3 jib unrolled. Yes, they can be pokey and they don't point well
compared to a sloop, but they have other advantages on broad reaches
and the like. Personally, I don't find another stick a big hassle, but
it's a great place to mount the radar and other bits and pieces.
Oh, and the safety factor or having an extra mast for redundancy, in case
one comes down...? Well, if you'll notice, many ketches use a triatic stay
as part of their rigging. This ties the masts together! If one comes down,
they're both coming down. Twice as much work, even in failure more!
You know, I haven't seen that particular widow-maker on ANY schooner
or ketch outside of a picture book. I agree that they're a menace, but
I can't say I believe anyone seriously uses them anymore.
The ability of a ketch to customize a wider variety of sail combinations
than a sloop is theoretically true. So what? A sloop with a roller furling
jib and some kind of short-hand-friendly flying sail (asymmetrical
spinnaker, cruising 'chute, whatever) is capable of easily and simply
creating a pretty damned wide variety of sail configurations itself.
Yes, with a taller mast, which means bigger main, etc. What I like is
the committed staysail stay, which can be the last sail up in big
wind, and yet is far kinder to drive than a mostly rolled up yankee,
say.
The
"fact" that a ketch can put up staysails in combination with various size
sails on her dual masts, along with various types of jibs, etc. doesn't
necessarily mean that the ketch has a *better* ability to fly the perfect
sailplan for a given condition.
No, it doesn't. But the possibility is there, and I find I can handle
a marginally larger ketch than sloop due to individual sail areas. I
lose on pointing, but gain on downwind. Also, when you comtemplate
less-common options, like a mizzen spinnaker, you can rig maximum sail
for prolonged light-air conditions.
I guarantee that a sloop with a roller
furling jib and an easy-to-handle flying sail will make better time and
arrive at her destination with a more rested crew than a ketch in almost all
conditions, especially if there's any windward work involved.
Maybe. But I would hesitate to make blanket statements of that kind
other than I agree they don't point as high generally.
And by the way, IMO, you should replace your standing rigging every ten
years. Wanna get a coupla cost estimates of the price difference between
rerigging a sloop and rerigging a ketch? Ouch!
Sure, but if anti-ketch sentiments prevail, I'll get a great deal and
will save enough to re-rig, right? G
For the sake of saving me a lot of time, I'll just throw yawls into this
group. Not perfectly appropriate; but good enough for Usenet. For a defense
of the yawl as the only possible "real" sailing rig, see any of Don Street's
writings. He loves his yawl with a passion.
Yawls are great, too, in certain conditions and waters, but I bet
Don's one of the few people who can still sail one effectively. You
see the occasional new ketch design, but a yawl? Not unless it's
custom.
The other multi-mast type of rig, although not mentioned in the OP, is the
schooner. Guess what I think about them? cynical grin
I find a ketch solves most of the problems of a schooner, unless I am
delivering tea from China to Baltimore, in which case I'll go with the
schooner. Recall "Atlantic": schooners are no slouches, or don't have
to be.
snip
SLOOPS
A modern simple sloop is really an elegant setup, especially for
single-or-short-handers. A main with single-line reefing, a roller-furling
jib, and some kind of easy-to-use flying sail give you a rig which is simple
and easy to handle, easy to adjust for changing conditions, and a lot
cheaper than buying all the sails you need to power a ketch through the same
range of conditions.
Well, I *own* a sloop with a beefy rig and a huge (maybe too huge) J
measurement, but I may go with a cutter/ketch eventually, because I've
sailed both and think the ketch has its place. But hey, as long as
we're sailing, I don't care if it's a log with a blanket on a stick.
I can anticipate how you view junk rigs or gaff-rigs...G
R.
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