Schooner envy...

I've been getting a lot of questions about the decision to go with one mast as opposed to two...

My interest in going with a schooner was a quest of keeping the spars down to a manageable length as well as keeping the individual sails weight down... OK there is the fact that schooners are just all kinds of cool as well!

The problem on "So It Goes" at just shy of 34 feet LOA made fitting in the required 600 feet or so of sail area just a bit problematic. The interior was surprisingly unaffected but sorting out a logical and trouble free running rigging fix for the junk rig just did not work without just a few too many hoops to jump through.

Of course, my real desire was to do a balanced lug rig and while the running rigging situation was much more simple (I almost said elegant) but to get the sail area needed without the two sails getting in each others way was problematic. The logical fix is to go with a higher aspect balanced lug sails but then you have much taller masts... 

All boat design is always a compromise... Right?

Which brought me back to a single mast. While I could have gone with a single balanced lug sail on an unstayed mast, the idea of having to manhandle a 600+ square foot sail is just a little too much like work for my tastes. So to manage the sail area into a less worklike situation, we find ourselves back into the sloop or cutter realm once again.

Unstayed masts and headsails are less than a perfect combination so some staying becomes part of the new equation as well. BUT being that I just lost a rig to a bit of metal breaking I am not all warm and fuzzy feeling about putting myself into the situation where it might happen again. What to do?

The first thought was to go with a keel stepped rather than a deck stepped mast as well as a mast section that will more or less stand up by itself. Throw in some rigging to be able to have a reasonable tension for the head-sails and we are getting into a belts and braces situation.

The new rig does not have to be as tall as the one I'm replacing and looks to be about seven feet shorter which results in less lever arm... I'm starting to like this rig!

Now there is still the problem of metal pieces that go ping which can to a great extent be solved by simply getting rid of metal in the rig... Fiber stays are now both accessible to us mere mortals and costwise are pretty much par with its stainless counterparts as long as you don't get silly. The advantages of weight are a big advantage of course... It's pretty easy to get rid of all metal at the masthead (losing even more weight) by taking a page from old gaff rig rigging practices which leaves only a cunning plan or two to sort out the chainplate situation (and we are still working on that...)

More soon come...