One Hand a Big Schooner Anyone?

[Scot McPherson]

Originally Posted by ryon

See post #20 in this very thread, which I responded to by direct quote in #22.

My apologies. Some how I misinterpreted that as a response to my post.

[ryon]

Originally Posted by Scot McPherson

My apologies. Some how I misinterpreted that as a response to my post.

No problem. Let's go sailing sometime!

[Scot McPherson]

I'd like that if you are in the Long Island sound area. As for me and my schooner, you gotta wait at LEAST 3 more years.

And to be honest, it's something I want to build as a for me live aboard, but also as a leadership camp for teens and young adults where roles are clearly defined and sometimes we need to know when to lead, when to listen and when to suck it up and have great fun throughout the adventure of exploring the northern east coast. Then bringing her down south for perhaps some corporate leadership camp or just executive relaxation...lol

[Wattsailing]

Hi I sail a top,ls schooner and live aboard her with my wife and two kids when we started I did all the sail work I have 8 sails to work with 42 lines or 18 halyards and 16 sheet lines one of the sails is a square sail all sails are worked from deck , it's easy in light Wind but over 15 kns it's hard work, for three years and 3500nm and I am still working on the trim lol you can do it on your own , but now the kids are older it is a lot easier to sail with a crew. We love her she's not fast but she is very sea worthy , we where knocked down 3 times off Albany WA she just slowly came back up each time and sailed on.

[dana-tenacity]

This weekend I singlehanded a few hundred miles in our 19m schooner - bliss

[Schooner Chandlery]

Originally Posted by dana-tenacity

This weekend I singlehanded a few hundred miles in our 19m schooner - bliss

Lovely!

I'm cracking up about this thread. Schooners are made for short handed sailing. Given the same size/displacement, I think a schooner is easier to sail than any other rig plan. Split rig helps of course. We short hand sail our 54' LOD 69' LOA schooner coastal cruising and in rough conditions. 32T on the last haulout. A bit shorter than the OP's question but within displacement range. Short hand means I'm on watch alone and then my husband is on watch alone. Back and forth. Our boat was solo sailed back from Hawaii to the PNW by a previous owner who sailed alone frequently--he broke two toes running around on deck during heavy weather but other than that...OK.

Thoughts:
post about Alcyone: That was Sugar Flannigan and I think the boat is larger than 65' on deck

"too heavy a helm" sounds like this guy didn't have a good autopilot. Mainsail first, then foresail, then staysail, then jib if crew aboard. With nobody but myself putting up sails, it's gaff foresail first (well balanced sail) then staysail then mainsail then jib. It is all dependent on the particular boat in terms of balance. Our mainsail is very powerful compared to the other sails. In over 20 kts I have to think hard about whether I want it up.

Weather healm does point you into the wind, yes. But I prefer to get started sailing so many times I'll put up the foresail and staysail and then take a break from hoisting to set sail, coil lines (the 4:1 purchase on the peak and throat halyards mean about 200' each line to get put away) think about the next iteration of mainsail and jib--do I really want all that power or not? ah--you don't think it takes endurance to sail a big boat solo? really. LOL.

Flaking the mainsail Yup, our bermuda main is 13 oz dacron and it's a big task to get it flaked nicely.

Systems are the problem, Yup again. Big boat = big systems to keep running. There does always seem to be something needing a bit of attention and one can't always heave to to deal with what's come up unexpectedly. It's not the sail plan that one would worry about on on a 60+ ft boat.

Agility and Patience as well as gollywobblers Triple yup. It takes patience and if you don't have agility (I don't) you'll find yourself rigging up a lot of extra breastlines and such to give you that place to grab onto as you're trying to get somewhere fast and things are rough. Either that or you'll be crawling alot --return to my point above about the guy breaking 2 toes... And setting a fisherman (including the largest a gollywobbler) can be done alone (why would you want to???) if you have two stays on each side in parallel to the foremast (a few inches out from the mast) called jackstays. They allow you to raise and lower the golly (or fish) on a stay instead of loose footed all around. We had these stays on our schooner but removed them when we re-rigged (not knowing what they were for!) I'd stay away from topsails if solo. Just me.

Knock down 3 times? Ouchie. Glad the rig wasn't harmed. Full knockdown? what sails were up and what were the conditions?

One last thought--I can't see why one would choose a boat so big if going solo. I feel our boat is too big (space below) for us, 2 people, but we wanted a pre-WWII classic boat originally built as a cruising boat..turns out there aren't so many around and many are schooners.

Fair winds,
Brenda