What affect if the Mizzen sail is removed from a Nauticat 33

[Silver Fern]

Hi, thanks for the valuable advise......it stays...

Regards,

Robert

[Symphony]

my sloop's main boom was the same as the ketch's main boom. everything was the same except the missing mast and boom. it made the raised aft deck a wonderful place with a cover and the canvas edging from deck to rail.

I owned the actual boat and sailed it for years. every other opinion is conjecture, but to each his own. that's the fun of a boat; when you are paying you decide and you have lots of time to experiment.

i knew another guy with the ketch model, also a friend with the ketch rig on a 25' Fisher motorsailer. they never used the mizzen sail except as a riding sail at anchor.

Fair Seas and have fun with the nauticat no matter which way you sail her. Great boat. I would consider a 52' now.

[Cheechako]

Originally Posted by Symphony

my sloop's main boom was the same as the ketch's main boom. everything was the same except the missing mast and boom. it made the raised aft deck a wonderful place with a cover and the canvas edging from deck to rail.

I owned the actual boat and sailed it for years. every other opinion is conjecture, but to each his own. that's the fun of a boat; when you are paying you decide and you have lots of time to experiment.

i knew another guy with the ketch model, also a friend with the ketch rig on a 25' Fisher motorsailer. they never used the mizzen sail except as a riding sail at anchor.

Fair Seas and have fun with the nauticat no matter which way you sail her. Great boat. I would consider a 52' now.

Yep, a lot of boat design isn't performed as scientifically as some seem to think.

[Nauticatarcher]

Our Nauticat 44 was sloop rigged version, sailed well, can't say I ever said "I wish we had a mizzen mast". had a lovely clear aft deck over which we built a sturdy bimini. we could still fold bimini flat and did so when off shore, we just oversized piping. If our NC44 had been ketch rigged I doubt I would have removed mizzen though!

[charliehows]

On my boat the main deficit caused by having no mizzen is that in light winds with main and genoa the boat will not go about upwind - it needs the mizzen to give the extra bit of push to make the genoa come through the wind. Doesnt sound like much but i spent a day trying to make my way out of port stephens in these conditions with no motor and no mizzen - quite a bit of boat traffic, a very tricky harbour to manoevre in due to all the sandbars, and in order to go about i had to run off and gybe - bloody nightmare. Like a number of the other posters, I also spend a fair bit of time sailing with jib and mizzen alone - very easy way to reef by just dropping the main. My mizzen mast is mounted on the deck of an aft cabin.

[Snore]

Originally Posted by Silver Fern

Hi, thanks for the valuable advise......it stays...

Regards,

Robert

Smart move! There is a lot of physics/aerodynamics in sailing. As someone mentioned, removing the mizzen will move the center of effort forward. Probably well forward of the CLR. This will require using rudder to keep the boat going straight. Would that work?? Probably, but the boat would most likely sail slower.

There is sailing and there is is sailing. I spent the year before buying and the first year of ownership reading everything I could about the how to sail right. And I am still playing around trying squeeze an extra 1/10 a knot out of her.

You don't have to know about the physics, but it is sure nice surprising guys who don't.

[Silver Fern]

Thank you all for a very enlightened response. Most helpful. for your info the mizzen stays. Thank you for making that decision for me.

Kind regards to all,

Robert.

[korrigan]

My old full keeled ketch would sail itself as long as the wind was abeam or closer.

This was entirely a function of the mizzen.

A sloop will sail itself to windward but the angle through which it can be perturbed and still return to course is narrow. Anything below essentially close hauled it can't hold a course.

[minaret]

Remove the mizzen? Heresy.

[markpierce]

Me thinks you bought the wrong boat if you want to remove the mizzen. Presumably, the boat was designed with the mizzen in mind, and it provides many options.

[exMaggieDrum]

It will depend on your particular boat. We rarely used our mizzen but that was because of some rigging problems it had with roller furling specific to that particular mast. We could always balance the boat with our jib and main alone. I would have liked to have flown the mizzen but that is not the way it worked out. Mizzens are easy sails to handle if set up right.

The new owners that bought her removed the mizzen completely to get rid of the mass of cables on the aft end. They were happy they did.

We have a lot of Nauicats around here. They are very pricey compared to other boats. But motorsailing is the norm here too.

If you think you sail OK without a mizzen then do what makes sense to you. There may be times it would be useful. But riding at anchor was never a problem for us. We never used the sail for that anyway.

[brightontrader]

Would question why you need a fibreglass bimini given you have a pilot house. More windage you really don't want. Adding a spray hood will give you top protection.

I had a 42' nauticat copy in steel that was cutter rigged, lovely clear aft deck for fishing, entertaining etc, with a large (read huge) removable bimini that covered the entire aft deck from hatch to goal post made the boat habitable in the tropics. Large goal post gave me great davits, panel mounting, corner seats and rod holders plus handholds that gave a sense of security in rough seas as a clear aft deck high up like on a aft cabin Nauticat can be disconcerting to say the least..!

Sailed the boat in the bad stuff from inside....only used the outside wheel for docking or downwind surfing on oceans to pass the time...

get a cutter/sloop from day one.IMHO

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Snore

Smart move! There is a lot of physics/aerodynamics in sailing. As someone mentioned, removing the mizzen will move the center of effort forward. Probably well forward of the CLR. This will require using rudder to keep the boat going straight. . .

Maybe, or maybe not. You shouldn't make blanket statements like that, because different boats react very difference to changes in the sail plan.

My present boat, for example, is entirely insensitive to fore and aft balance of the sail plan. Weather helm is a linear function of heel angle. I can sail with jib alone, main alone, or any combination, and it makes no difference at all to helm balance, unless I'm heeling more than 20 degrees.

If the OP removed his mizzen, I would bet dollars to doughnuts that he will sail FASTER, not slower, at least upwind, as a considerable amount of drag is eliminated, and the mizzen on a ketch generally produces usable drive only on a reach.

However, I would never remove the mizzen of a ketch. The value of the mizzen for providing more sail plan options, and as a place to mount stuff conveniently, is just too great. In my opinion, the ketch rig is the ideal rig for a motor sailer, which will not be sailed upwind anyway.

I have spent a great deal of money and effort making my boat capable of sailing long distances upwind. I don't regret it, because I love to sail, and I've succeeded -- just got back from sailing 1500 miles against prevailing winds, and had 1/3 tank of fuel left when I arrived and bought no fuel on the way. But I have to say that it is much easier and much cheaper to get this capability with engine power than with sails. All modern cruising boats, including even mine (with her tall mast, carbon laminate sails, bulb keel, etc.), are used mostly or at least very often as motor sailers. So the ketch rigged and honest motor sailer is actually better suited to the needs of average cruisers, I think, than cruising boats pretending to be pure sailboats, but not actually used that way.

[Cheechako]

It has already been stated by Nauticat owners that both the ketch and sloop version have the same mast location.

[cal40john]

Originally Posted by Cheechako

It has already been stated by Nauticat owners that both the ketch and sloop version have the same mast location.

The same is true of the Morgan OI 41, but the sloop version has a longer boom to offset some of the imbalance, but apparently not all. The OI 41 that I sailed was the sloop version and it had lee helm until it was heeled 20+ degrees. With the hydraulic steering and the rudder angle indicator set low down in the pedestal where most didn't look for it, the more casual sailors who went out on it had no idea there was anything wrong. Once we were trimmed for close hauled I always had to look aft to watch the wake stream back at 10 to 15 degrees to weather showing how much we were losing.