|
With all due respect, I would like to clarify or correct some items in F94Bill's post.
"1935 Bristol":
I am not sure what company F94Bill is referring to but to clarify the Bristol Yachts that I am referring to is a company started by Clint Pearson in the 1960's after his cousin Everett and he sold Pearson Yachts to Grumman. That company never built wooden boats.
"Yawl or Ketch has ........somewhat heavier ballast"
Generally speaking, yawls and ketches have less ballast relative to their overall displacement and sail area that sloops and cutters. Ketch and yawls with their lower rigs get by with less stability but that is somewhat offset by their heavier spar weights.
"....on a reach the mizzen is a power sail that adds horsepower to the sail plan. Moreover, the mizzen's placement far aft allows much more head sail to be added during light to moderate wind."
When you look at sail plans the most important factors are sail area, efficiency, complexity, and tendancy to produce heeling. Ketch and yawl rigs generally do carry more sail area than a sloop of the same displacement, but the sail area is far less efficient being broken into smaller parts and acting in the down draft (bad air) of the other sails. The headsails on a sloop or cutter generally have a taller hoist allowing them to carry larger more efficient headsails than is the norm on a ketch or yawl.
"My Yawl often sailed with a Genoa on the fore wire, a sweeper on the second wire, and a club jib. Such high square footage of sails forward would not be practical for sloops and would require much rudder to compensate (Drag). "
There are two points here. when you have three separate sails crammed into the foretriangle of a boat this size, they become extremely inefficient, requiring a lot more sail area to achieve the same drive of a single smaller sail, but beyond that, balance and the amount of rudder required comes from the relationship of the underwater side loads to theabove water side loads. A sloop or cutter could be designed with the same number of sails in the foretriangle as F94Bill is describing and be perfectly balanced. That said, there is absolutely no reason that in this day and age anyone would design a comparatively small boat with that many sails in the froetriangle.
"Yawl or Ketch, if designed as such, has the main mast stepped further aft than the sloop mast. "
With all due respect to F94Bill, Yawls and ketches are generally designed with their main masts further forward of the position typical of a sloop or cutter's single mast in order to balance the center of effort which would otherwise be located further aft by the forces of the mizzen.
"A Yawl or Ketch is a "Reaching" blue water sailer, in that the mizzen is set to hold a steady course with the rudder streamlined"
Again this is a matter of balance. A well designed sloop is no more or less balanced than a well designed ketch or yawl. Over trimming or under trimming the mizzen to achieve balance typically has the same drag impact as having the rudder cocked over.
"A wind of 15-18 kts always put the Yawl at hull speed and the crew relaxed with no one at the helm."
That may be true of some Yawls, but it is no more true for a yawl than it would be for a sloop or cutter. Also just for the record, most modern boats will sail at hull speed at windspeeds in the 10 knot range and achieve substantially higher than hull speed at the windspeeds mentioned above.
"Haven't had a lot of experience with a Ketch rig, but I would think that the Ketch with its smaller mizzen might not be as efficient as the Yawl?"
Ketches generally have a larger mizzen than a yawl and that mizzen tends to be more efficient than the often vestage mizzens employed on many yawls.
"For direct Down wind sailing you simply drop the mizzen and the ship becomes a Sloop"
True, sort of, but a sloop with a lot less sail area and more drag from the mizzen than a real sloop.
Respectfully,
Jeff
|