AMEL - Death of the Cruising Ketch ?

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by robert sailor

I’ve always learned the difference between yawls and a ketch was if the mast was forward of the rudder post it was a ketch but if it was aft of the rudder post a yawl. Now have a look at many older full keel boats and it’s not uncommon for that rudder post to be well forward and a long overhang makes it even further. And yes generally the yawl has a shorter stick. The yawl was a cheater design back in the CCA racing days where that sail area was never written into the rules so it was free and wasn’t handy capped. The only time you might eek out a little extra power from it was on a reach, going Hard to windward it worked against you so not used then

The business with the rudder post is a common definition, which comes from some racing rule or another.


But a better definition is that the mizzen on a yawl is for primarily for balance and not drive, so it's much smaller. Whereas with a ketch, the mizzen is meant for business.



The disadvantages of ketches are greater, when the mizzenmast is smaller and/or set closer to the mainmast. Less to gain, and more interference between the sails. If the mizzen is large and the mizzenmast is set far back from the mainmast, which is only possible on a larger boat, then the mizzen carries its weight and the rig works better.



Look at Dashew's ketches for example, especially something like Beowulf. That's a very attractive rig -- lot of power but center of effort is low, and the sails aren't that big for that size of a boat. Lower the center of effort and you need less ballast and/or can do a shallower draft, for the same amount of sail area. Less ballast makes a lighter, faster boat.

[Maine Sail]

A customer of ours just recently bought an Amel 50 for himself. He had no desire for the ketch version, and looked at a number of them. e expect that boat to be on this side of the pond next year as he is currently sailing it around Europe for a while. Done a lot of long distance consulting on electrical upgrades and the boat is quite well built, even the electrical systems.

[dfelsent]

I do like my ketch. Moonbeam was built as a cruiser. The mizzen goes up first, comes down last. Gets used every time, even when just motoring.
The mizzen is about 1/3 of the area as the main.

[LakeSuperior]

When non-sailors inquire about my mizzen on my yawl I tell them it is mainly for decoration. That is a mostly true statement BTW.

[Mickeyrouse]

Originally Posted by billgewater

From Wiki


And there I was thinking that a Yawl was part of a Texan greeting. As in "How de do, yawl?"

So, when did that change? .....being a yawl sailor......from Texas

[Bill O]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

The whole thing here is that sloops are CHEAPER. That's, er, the bottom line.

The bean counters at Amel after Henri's death just decided not to spend the money. That allows them to either be a bit more competitive in price or make a little more profit or both.

Besides being cheaper, sloops sail a little better upwind, all other things being equal, are simpler (if not easier) to sail, have less cluttered deck. Ketches have a lot more sail plan flexibility and have a number of other advantages.

I like ketches myself, at least in boats over 50 and preferably over 60 feet. Would be my choice if I were building from scratch, for the kind of sailing I do. Ketches make a lot of sense for the kind of long distance sailing the original Amels were built for. But not much sense for more typical weekend/vacation short range cruising which is what 99% of cruising boats are designed for.

Don't know whether the current batch of Amels is aimed at the same clientele, or not.

Totally agree w/the above comments and lower cost is one of the main driving factors. To keep up w/the "cheaper" boats in the marketplace other builder are cutting corners to stay competitive otherwise they will perish.
We had direct discussion w/Oyster a couple of years ago and this was very much what they were doing.

Amel unfortunately is doing the same thing. We liked the 55, but after we saw how much they cheapened up the interior build, we passed.
Agree the other major factor is how the boats are used by most people these days. Many of the used Amels we looked at were marina queens and not being used for long distance cruising. Why would you want to build a boat w/a cruising ketch rig, when most people want the convenience of the simple sloop rig for the quick sail?

In a similar thought, for the weekend sailor, maybe the ketch rig offers too many sail combinations and one needs to think about it more than w/a sloop rig?

[Nicholson58]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

Newest Amel 60 is ...


not a ketch !!!


but a sloop !!!


Death of the cruising ketch?


(previous newest Amel - 50 - was a sloop too!)



barnakiel

Death of the ketch. This topic repeats often. It depends where you are. If in the US or other places new boats are sold to then yes, fewer ketches. Most boats are used as dock queens and day-sailed in decent weather.

We are live aboard in the Caribbean. We often see that more than half of the monohull boats in an anchorage are ketches. Further, the more remote we are from charter hubs, the fewer cats we see in the percentage.

On our 2016 transit from Hampton, Va to Virgin Gorda we experienced several days of 25-40 knot winds and tall seas. We flew a staysail jib and mizzen making 9.5 up the waves and 12 down for days, making over 500 miles in a two-day stretch in reasonable comfort and safety. Transit was 7.5 days total. Our boat is a 1984 Camper & Nicholson ketch, 40 tons.

BTW, we see plenty of Amel ketches in the Caribbean. They tend to roll a bit more than most at anchor. There is an Amel fleet at the marina in Le Marin, Martinique.

Most of the insane mega-yacht sailboats in Faulmouth and English Harbors, Antigua are split rigs.

[MicHughV]

What got me into sailing was the arrival of a Bruce Roberts Build Your Own booklet that appeared in the mail while I was still in high school. This would be back in the late 1960's. Leafing thru' the pages, the boats got incrementally bigger until I turned the page and there it was ..the Roberts 38 ketch. The first " ketch" I had ever seen.

At the time, I did not know a ketch rig from a stick in the ground as all my sailing experience up to that time was on a 505 dinghy...

Yet, those twin masts called my name like nothing has before or since.

One can argue the benefits or disadvantages of a split rig until the cows come home, but there is no denying the alluring beauty of a ketch.

From the time I first saw the picture of the Roberts 38 ketch until the time I actually started building it, a period of probably 10 years, that first impression stayed with me the whole time.

I had no real idea what I was actually intending to build, having never built a boat or anything for that matter, but those twin masts captivated me in such a way, the actual boat meant little.

To this day, a ketch can turn my head like no other boat can.

To talk about a split rig, one must also defer to the beauty of a split rig, where the beauty of such a rig far exceeds the sailing advantages or disadvantages.

In my innocent younger years, I had also seen the mizzen as a "spare" for the main in the event of a dismasting, an occurrence that fortunately never materialized.

Ketches are beautiful, I'm here to say.

[redhead]

We love 'em too.

[MicHughV]

ah, how sweet this is.....

[HankOnthewater]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

ah, how sweet this is.....

or this, another sunset scene, but looking at the number of people on board, more a twilight sail than a world cruise

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

. . . One can argue the benefits or disadvantages of a split rig until the cows come home, but there is no denying the alluring beauty of a ketch.. . .

This is subjective. I happen to agree.

[swordds]

Continuing the theme of what is no longer: a tiller even on boats less than 30 ft. and soon probably a single steering pedestal (everyone must have two) and a mechanical ships bell clock and someday perhaps even a magnet compass. Fortunately still plenty of us old curmudgeons still abound. :-)

[danleach]

Sniff, sniff....does it smell like boiled linseed oil and kerosene to anyone else in this thread. ;-)

[MicHughV]

I've only had the privilege to sail on a wood boat one time..and that was probably 40 years ago. I forget the make, but it came from the New England area, and was maybe 50' long. There was ALWAYS water in the bilge, and the ships crew would give the hand pump a few strokes every few hours.....wake up in the night to go have a pee, work the hand pump for a few strokes first...etc...you couldn't leave the boat without someone on it all the time. The boat had an electric bilge pump as well, but battery capacity was questionable. I thought it was rather a dubious way to go about boat ownership, but I guess that is way it was " back then"...