Tarnacc
Below is what I drafted this ayem before I got busy with
work. I thot in light of your last post (#33 in the thread) I'd post it as is, since it addresses your express and implied questions in #33, and specifically your desire to get "close enuff to live with".
Mast rake ain't gonna do it any more than shifting ballast. "Towing sideways" is a bother and really unreliable. You can implement my "cut out and hang it on the wall" with far less bother, and with far greater resultant accuracy.
Anyway — here it is what I'd drafted:
Tarnacc:
Forgive me for piping up again :-)
Wingsail said : “Putting extra weight in the stern drops the stern and raises the bow. This brings the CLR aft! (which is the wrong direction).”
And that is precisely correct. As I suggested, shifting ballast simply won't do it for you. Shifting ballast will injure a boat's handling in some way or other. She has, in still water, to float to her design waterline IF AT ALL POSSIBLE. You may choose to deviate from that fundamental tenet, but you should not do so without understanding what the
price is that you must pay, or if you are not willing to pay that
price. So start with that as a departure point.
Please understand before we go any further that all I say, I say in the honest hope that it may be useful to you – I DON'T say it to beat up on your boat, and certainly not to beat up on you as the boat's owner. If you will accept that, then let's proceed :-):
Moving the mast is a major undertaking and I will go into detail below, but for now I wish to make the point that to fit the boat with a mizzenmast if far, far easier due to structural considerations. Doing so will correct the lee
helm, and it will retain the driving force of the original sail plan with which nothing is wrong EXCEPT that it is wrongly positioned fore and aft.
One of the reasons it's wrongly positioned is that the
designer got off to a really bad start (if SailboatData's arrangement plan is to be trusted) by attempting to fit four births in a “two birth hull”. “Quarter berths” (“Afterbirths” as a former shipmate (f) used to call them :-)!) are perfectly fine in a transom sterned “Winnebago hull” such as for example the
Catalina 27, but attempting to fit them in a scowegian-inspired “spidsgatter” (double-ender) of a mere 26 Feet on deck indicates that the
designer is a little weak on the fundamental concepts.
Now for moving the mast:
As far as I can discern from the SailboatData arrangement plan, even when I blow it up, there is NO structure to support the mast at the position where it needs to go. There is, so it looks, a “half bulkhead” twixt the
head of the port-side quarter birth an the
galley furniture. But that half-bulkhead does NOT extend to the centreline of the boat, and even it it did, it would not serve as a
compression post. Thus a new, custom built compression post needs to be installed, and from the SailboatData plan we cannot know what modifications of the
bilge will be required to accomplish that. However, I can see how that could be accomplished.
Moving the mast will require moving the chainplates. New ones can be through-bolted on the
outboard side of the
hull, and the old positions can be filled in in a suitable manner. Lots of
work, and a PITA, but not an insurmountable obstacle. However, at the new position it would be extremely difficult to fit any kind of structure to counteract the forces transmitted the chainplates to the hull. These forces will tend to collapse the sides of the hull inwards. How significant that would be I cannot say without doing calculations. It IS something to be aware of.
HOWEVER: If you move the mast aft, the angle of the backstay at the top of the mast will be reduced and the leech (let alone roach) of the
mainsail will not clear the backstay as you change tack. You must then reduce the area of the
mainsail, which is something that you shouldn't do on a boat with an already inadequate SA/D ratio. You could replace the fixed backstay with “running”
backstays, one on each side, and the consequently necessary Highfield levers which would
permit you to tauten the
weather backstay and slacken the lee one as you come on the other tack.
All the above would cost you more, I'll wager, than you paid for the boat in the first place.
However, were you to go as far as to rig
running backstays, you'd be better off leaving the mast where it is and re-rigging with a gaff main. That would bring your CE aft to where it should be, give you a better SA/D ratio and an altogether better boat as far as handling is concerned.
Now: If you fit a mizzen (let's not argue in this case whether that would make her a
ketch or a yawl) but leave the mast where it is, you could retain your existing ward-robe of
sails. PROVIDED you have enough area in the new mizzen sail (“jigger” or “spanker”) to keep the boat balanced, you could certainly wear a lapping, deck sweeping
genoa, and you could devise a reefing schedule that would keep you sailing happily right up to the end of
Beaufort 6. Under “jib'n'jigger” maybe even higher, though you wouldn't make much way in such a hard blow with consequent highish waves.
If she were my boat, I should be able to fit 'er with a mizzen for less than $1K. I am therefore of the opinion that if the boat suits you in other ways, then rather than walk away from her with the financial loss that that would entail, you should make her a yawl/ketch and enjoy her! She will sail perfectly fine if you do that.
One more thing: A ship's or a boat's “end sails”, the ones that hang over the ends of the hull, have never been meant to be “drivers”. Their function is to afford the
skipper the opportunity to BALANCE the boat to suit obtaining
weather conditions. They are trimming devices! A half century ago untold numbers of
new boat owners were inveigled into the emerging market for “cruiser/racers”, and centuries of accumulated knowledge of seafaring fell victim to the beguiling promises of entrepreneurs and “marketing men”. All sorts of designers jumped aboard the yacht design gravy train (I think your boat's designer may have been one of them), while at the same time “rules” such as the International
Offshore Rule and the Pacific Handicap
Racing Formula, to mention but two of them, had a most abusive effect on centuries of accumulated knowledge. Those rules had as their objective the handicapping of individual boats of diverse design so they could
race “fairly” against each other, and cruising be damned! Designers' attempts to 'massage” and circumvent the rules in their designs led to the abandonment of hard won lessons in design, and to a drastic reduction in the quality of the “aggregate knowledge” of the new total population of yachtsmen because so many people that had no maritime tradition behind them came into the market for yachts. These people constituted a “market of ignorance”. Such a market has ever been, and ever shall be, the
marketing man's delight!
Whichever way you go, the best of luck to you :-)
TrentePieds