No Traveller

[Smokeys Kitchen]

I believe that the Gozzards were all built with no traveler and just vang sheeting with an end boom main sheet in a fixed position. I have not sailed one - but on the photos I've seen of Gozzards, the vang doesn't look to be much larger, if at all, than a normal vang.

This is the only photo I could (quickly) find of an end boom on a Gozzard.

[charliehows]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

With respect, if you are that lackadaisical about sailing, I have no desire to go sailing with you. Wouldn't be much fun...

Jim

glad to see my filtering system works. FYI, my main is fully battened and with the vangs tightened holds quite a nice shape but the boat aint no racer, it's a cruiser, I know its limitations and they suit me fine. The tiny bit of extra power that would come from fiddling with the travellers, as I said, ain't worth the candle.

[Mirar]

We had such good success with the double mainsheets on our last 48' ketch that we put them on our new alloy cutter. It gives us lots of mainsail control and helps to take some of the load off the vang when close hauled. For points off the wind we have a heavy tackle on the port and starboard rail that act as preventers and additional vangs. Makes jibing less stressful on everything. With the double sheets we can pull the main up wind before jibing, then use the leeward sheet to allow the main to ease over before changing direction. Sorry about the side ways pic.

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by Mirar

We had such good success with the double mainsheets on our last 48' ketch that we put them on our new alloy cutter. It gives us lots of mainsail control and helps to take some of the load off the vang when close hauled. For points off the wind we have a heavy tackle on the port and starboard rail that act as preventers and additional vangs. Makes jibing less stressful on everything. With the double sheets we can pull the main up wind before jibing, then use the leeward sheet to allow the main to ease over before changing direction. Sorry about the side ways pic.

Wow, What a boat! Sure would love to see more shots of her.

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by cal40john

Your boat does have a traveller, but to get the boom to near center you will have a tighter leech. I believe this is called a Crosby rig and I've seen it on old Lightnings and Cal 20s. I've read Crosby originally put this on Snipes.

How it works is you sheet in. The boom will be about over the leeward block. Grab the boom with your hand and pull it up to the centerline. While holding it on the centerline, sheet in some more. The boom will remain close to the centerline.

Why it works is that the perimeter of a right triangle is longer than an isosceles triangle with the same altitude. Height of the boom isn't going to change much, so the altitude of the mainsheet triangles remains close to the same. So when you pull the boom to the centerline and sheet in some more the boom can't move back out to leeward.

Anyway that's how I was taught on a Lightning in the 70's, and it worked.

Thanks, but like I said before, I have no problem trimming my main with my lack of traveller. (I always did enjoy watching those Lightnings race though. Nice looking boats)

Call my boat's setup what you will, but I wouldn't say it has a traveller as in what I'm used to when I raced beach cats.

All those had the standard 7'-8' traveler.

It is nice though to have speed and a flat spinnaker so you can sheet the main tight on the downwind leg......back in the day before foiling, we'd have the main out another foot or so on the downwind and we could still hit 23 knots plus. Main block was usually 8 to 1. (since there's no backstay that block and mainsheet are supporting the mast when the spinnaker is up. If your sheeting is too loose the carbon fiber mast can break on a strong gust) Downhaul 4 to 1 at least, but of course back then we were driving them singlehanded!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1rZUMkisjA

[thomm225]

More good traveller shots. Also it's fun to see who is handling the mainsheet, and who has the traveler and downhaul plus mast rotation or is the crew doing everything except driving. (back in the day we single handed these boats (Nacra 17's) but without the jib. I had a jib though for distance races and took the mod penalty)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSYCz7gePBU

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by charliehows

glad to see my filtering system works. FYI, my main is fully battened and with the vangs tightened holds quite a nice shape but the boat aint no racer, it's a cruiser, I know its limitations and they suit me fine. The tiny bit of extra power that would come from fiddling with the travellers, as I said, ain't worth the candle.

To each his own style of sailing, of course, but traveler adjustment is not "fiddling". It's the only control which directly changes the angle of attack of the sail without changing anything else. I can't imagine sailing efficiently upwind without one. "Fiddling", on the contrary, would be trying to correct the angle of attack and then having to retrim everything else, every time you do it, in the absence of a traveler. You slack (or harden) the mainsheet and can only guess whether you've done it enough, because you're changing the leech tension at he same time so you can't see the result of your adjustment. So then adjust the vang, only to see you didn't get it quite right, and then do it over again. Bleh!



Of course if you're in the "gentlemen don't sail to windward" camp, you won't care, and that's fine too.

Getting back to the HR64, I guess if the vang is powerful enough and pushbutton, all that fiddling wouldn't be all that burdensome (mainsheet in or out, then adjust the vang), but I like it less and less, the more I think about it. Methinks the designers considered most windward legs to involve the 300 horsepower diesel. Shame because that narrow hull with such a long waterline ought to be pretty nice to drive to windward.

[Dockhead]

Yet another disadvantage - you can't raise the boom above the centreline.

The Swan I spent the day on (with the Finnish national team for the Nordstream cup) had to use nasty improvised barber haulers to overcome this, negating any "clean deck" advantages of the no-traveler rig. Bleh.

[TJ D]

I'm pretty sure that you'd be miserable without a traveller. Ours is better than 10' long, and we use every inch of it. We don't have a vang, anyway.

I'm pretty convinced, knowing what I do about you, that you really ought to be doing a custom build.

First, I think you should really only consider a metal hull for the sailing you want to do. I know Evans is pretty happy with carbon composites for duty around ice, but it seems like a ferociously expensive way to go.

Besides, at the lengths you're looking at, an alloy boat can have a really low d/l. I think that Beowolf comes in near to, or lower than my boat.

I'd imagine that if an HR64 is under consideration, building custom should be achievable at the same price, provided you don't spend a fortune on the interior. I met a very nice couple recently who had built a 58 footer, and he was really shocked at just how much the (very nice) interior upped the cost.

If I were considering what you're contemplating, and where you want to sail, this would be the direction that I would go. Minimalist (but still livable) inside, and no expense spared where it counted. I would think that this could be done at or below the cost of a new high-end cruiser. And, you get just what you want. I'd have a glorious time doing it, I'm sure. Way more rewarding than just writing a check.

There- solved it all for you!

Happy new year, by the way. I'm sitting in LHR at the moment.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by TJ D

I'm pretty sure that you'd be miserable without a traveller. Ours is better than 10' long, and we use every inch of it. We don't have a vang, anyway.

I'm pretty convinced, knowing what I do about you, that you really ought to be doing a custom build.

First, I think you should really only consider a metal hull for the sailing you want to do. I know Evans is pretty happy with carbon composites for duty around ice, but it seems like a ferociously expensive way to go.

Besides, at the lengths you're looking at, an alloy boat can have a really low d/l. I think that Beowolf comes in near to, or lower than my boat.

I'd imagine that if an HR64 is under consideration, building custom should be achievable at the same price, provided you don't spend a fortune on the interior. I met a very nice couple recently who had built a 58 footer, and he was really shocked at just how much the (very nice) interior upped the cost.

If I were considering what you're contemplating, and where you want to sail, this would be the direction that I would go. Minimalist (but still livable) inside, and no expense spared where it counted. I would think that this could be done at or below the cost of a new high-end cruiser. And, you get just what you want. I'd have a glorious time doing it, I'm sure. Way more rewarding than just writing a check.

There- solved it all for you!

Happy new year, by the way. I'm sitting in LHR at the moment.

Eh, and I'm in London. We could have hoisted one here. Are you on your way to the States, or did you just arrive?


Yes, you've tracked my thinking exactly. Over 60 feet, I don't think alu loses that much to composites in strength to weight, and is vastly easier to work with. Need to add deck hardware? Just weld it on; job done. And then the main reason he gave for going metal was the perfectly watertight deck. Both of these things I really appreciate with new fervor after having had a jib lead sheave pull through my deck, but not before its having pulled loose just enough to give me a leak which I spent months futilely trying to track down.

Evans really convinced me of this a few years ago, even if he is now singing a carbon song.

[hpeer]

I consider myself a pure novice at sail trim with a lot to learn. So I’m NOT giving advice.

Our small boat, 33’ Steel cutter, it has a short traveller. But it had no vang. I ended up installing Vang/preventers (4 part handy billy/Vang’s) from 70% down the main to the toe rail. The boom is relatively long so that the traveller is behind the cockpit. This setup does give me a lot of control of the sail and peace of mind I won’t crack my head. More lines than I like.

I also installed a traveller for the staysail. Helps keep the sail from kiting. It still needs a barber haul at times.

The big boat, a 44’ center cockpit Alan Pape cutter, does not have a traveller but does have a vang. A traveller would end up very short. IF I decide I need more control I will end up with the dual barber haul solution.

[Polux]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Yet another disadvantage - you can't raise the boom above the centreline.

The Swan I spent the day on (with the Finnish national team for the Nordstream cup) had to use nasty improvised barber haulers to overcome this, negating any "clean deck" advantages of the no-traveler rig. Bleh.

The Swan you sailed in was a racing boat. For racing it makes no sense not to have a traveller.

But in what regards performance cruising the tendency is to use a boon control line on the back of the boom (not over cabin) and no traveler. I never sailed on a boat with that set up but I do know that it works much better than what generally people think and works better than a traveler over the cabin or on an arch.

The system to work well implies, when sailing upwind, the possibility of having a very strong force applied on the boom, pulling it down, more than one would be able to do on most conventional systems, at least on cruising boats.

I know that it works well for two reasons: by what test sailors that are racers say about the boats that have that kind of control (when they test them) and for their extensive use by top sailboat designers on very fast performance cruisers, the Swam is a good example but many other top big performance cruisers use the same system.

A good example regarding smaller boats is the Maxi 1200 that was probably one of the last boats that will be designed by an old designer of performance cruisers, Pelle Petterson. The boat was designed as his perfect cruiser, the one that he would like to own.

Pelle Petterson is a sailing champion and certainly would not like to sail on a boat where the control over sails was not good.

"Pelle Petterson’s sailing career has given him two Olympic medals and dozens World Championship medals in sailing races. He is also a two-time challenger in the America’s Cup, one of the greatest races a sailor can take part in. Among all his awards, there are some that stand out from the others. Winning Star World Championships and beeing awarded a prize by King Gustav V in person after winning the Kungakannan sailing race in Särö four times. He received the Royal Institute of Technology’s Great Prize in 2004 and H. M. the King’s Medal 12th size for special merits in 2011."

The boat has a central winch that allows a big force to be exercised when pulling the boom down and is a very nice boat, narrower than most that have deserved very positive comments regarding sail performance by all testers from all the sail magazines that tested the boat.

I would like very much to sail that boat to have a personal view about the subject and see how it works, but out of that I trust the opinion of Pip Hare a professional offshore sail sailor that does also some testing for Yachtingworld and that is used to work and sail on racing boats:

"The mainsheet arrangement is perhaps the boldest statement of the Maxi’s simple sailing philosophy and definitely a step away from the traditional set-up. The mainsheet comes straight down to a central, reversible, electric winch on a pedestal in the centre of the cockpit, at the end of the cockpit table.

There is no traveller and the mainsheet itself is a single line, led directly to the winch.

I must admit I was surprised by this arrangement – without a traveller how can you trim the main properly upwind? Can an electric winch really dump a mainsheet quickly? But actually the more I played around with the system, the better I accepted the compromise in the interest of simplicity.

In reality, when a traveller is set over the top of a coachroof – perhaps as much as halfway back from the end of the boom – how much greater effect does it have in controlling mainsail leech tension than the kicker and how effective is it at bringing the end of the boom onto the centreline? I know on many boats with these arrangements the traveller is often too heavy to trim easily or is even seized up from lack of use.

The decision to do away with a traveller seems a bold one, however. What the Maxi offers as an alternative is a mainsheet at the end of the boom for maximum effect, with an electric winch that comes as standard and has enough power to pull the leech down as hard as you need. The reverse function on the electric winch allows you to spill wind responsively and the winch itself is not far away from the helm so if a bigger ‘dump’ is required, it is well within reach.


The downsides of this system are all about lack of choice when trimming the main. Upwind the boom will never really be on the centreline and any deviation to fetching will result in easing the mainsheet rather than a traveller and so give a bit more twist in the mainsail than you might have chosen. But as with my observation on in-haulers, it depends on your philosophy as to whether this would bother you or not.
Read more at Maxi 1200 boat test



I think that this is a good report on the system.

A movie with a test sail by Sailing Today with the boat being sailed hard to the wind and you can see that the main is not badly trimmed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB_thbg3N1M

Would I prefere to have a traveler over the cockpit?, sure, and a big one.

But the boats I like for cruising will not suit 90% of the cruisers. I am quite sure that this set up will work very well even with the ones that like performance cruisers for the simple reason that if it was not the case there would not be a huge number of very expensive and fast performance cruisers using this system and the number is increasing. Designers give to sailors what they want and works well for them.

[cal40john]

Just pointing out that most people don't realize that a Crosby rigged mainsheet is a form of a traveller.

I converted my Hobie 18 to an SX18 with assym spinnaker in the 80s. I currently have a Hobie 20. I raced until I had twins. As I got older I changed the 8:1 mainsheet to 11:1, not class legal. The 20 uses the downhaul as the mast bend control so 8:1 on the downhaul. The downhaul is an impressive depowering tool.

In addition to the Lightnings my club has a 505 with vang sheeting and a split tail mainsheet, so no traveller required. Split tail allows you to sheet to the centerline and the cascading 20:1 purchase vang completely controls twist. The club had a donated Star for awhile with the Bull ring vang, constant vang pressure at any sheeting angle.

So I agree the Crosby mainsheet does not hold a candle to other forms of traveller I've had opportunity to try, but most people don't seem to know that it is a traveller at all.

Originally Posted by thomm225

Thanks, but like I said before, I have no problem trimming my main with my lack of traveller. (I always did enjoy watching those Lightnings race though. Nice looking boats)

Call my boat's setup what you will, but I wouldn't say it has a traveller as in what I'm used to when I raced beach cats.

All those had the standard 7'-8' traveler.

It is nice though to have speed and a flat spinnaker so you can sheet the main tight on the downwind leg......back in the day before foiling, we'd have the main out another foot or so on the downwind and we could still hit 23 knots plus. Main block was usually 8 to 1. (since there's no backstay that block and mainsheet are supporting the mast when the spinnaker is up. If your sheeting is too loose the carbon fiber mast can break on a strong gust) Downhaul 4 to 1 at least, but of course back then we were driving them singlehanded!

[cal40john]

Originally Posted by Mirar

We had such good success with the double mainsheets on our last 48' ketch that we put them on our new alloy cutter. It gives us lots of mainsail control and helps to take some of the load off the vang when close hauled. For points off the wind we have a heavy tackle on the port and starboard rail that act as preventers and additional vangs. Makes jibing less stressful on everything. With the double sheets we can pull the main up wind before jibing, then use the leeward sheet to allow the main to ease over before changing direction. Sorry about the side ways pic.

A long time ago I put strong padeyes on a Cal 34 to be able to move the vang to the sidedeck as a preventer. Folded the boom 180 degrees at the vang when an accidental jibe caused by autopilot failure on the way to Hawaii.

[Colin A]

I think the answer is , most cruisers never use their travelers. Honestly.

The next answer is it depends on the boat and how the rest of it is set up. I have sailed a bunch of older boats with sheeting at the end of the boom and for the most part never really wished for a traveler or used the ones they had. I have been on other boats without travelers or frozen from lack of use that really could have used them. I like to have the option but really as long as the boat is moving along I'm mostly unconcerned with fine tuning trim.