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Subject: [world-cruising] Re: Cruising boat search
From: freshairfiend (jldalziel@XXX.XXX)
Date: Sat Mar 08 2003 - 19:52:24 EST
>
> Just for curiousity sake, how does an Airex cored hull
> stand up over time to the rigors of grounding and
> such? My first thought is that they would tend to be a
> problem. Anyone know anything about this?
It has less to do with the core material than the specific design and
layup of the bottom. A number of *lightly skinned* multihulls have
had problems. Like so much else, it is a matter of quality control-
and some research and intelligent question-asking on your part.
*Some* cored boats are designed so the core stops at about the
waterline, and the bottom is solid.
> > mast I can get under lots of bridges. The gaff rig
> > is definitely
> >
> === message truncated ===
>
> Looks like your post was cut short either by Yahoo or
> whenit was sent.
Full message is #432. The gist of the remainder of my earlier post
was that one shouldn't, when looking for a boat, automatically
exclude an otherwise good candidate because it doesn't have the exact
type of rig (or stern shape or...) you are entranced by. All rigs
have good and bad points. I'll admit I had reservations about my gaff
yawl before I bought it- I simply had not sailed a gaffer and had no
experience to judge it by. Now I know its a fine rig.
>
> From my, admittedly, quite limited experience on these
> old boats,
OK, you need to forget about the square-rigged "whatever" you were
aboard once. It's not relevant. Gaffers are not necessarily old
designs, either- mine was designed in 1989 and there are quite a few
modern designers turning out gaff-rigged boats. The reason is that it
is a versatile, economical cruising rig.
> I can't see how managing a heavy boom would
> be easy to handle. What am I missing? Is it something
> an older 5'4" woman could handle by herself if
> something happened to me? I wouldn't want to pass up
> something just because I don't know or understand what
> I'm looking at.
I think it would be worth spending some time in the library, learning
more about yacht rigs in general; see if you can find some books by,
for example, Conor O'Brien, John Leather and Phil Bolger, who explain
the gaff rig and others. O'Brien wrote in the 'teens through the
middle 1950's and describes the older types well, including adding
square sails. Bolger and Leather are up to date. Other list members
will undoubtedly steer you to other good authors.
The boom is going to be about as heavy as the boom of a marconi main
of the same length. But I think you mean the gaff itself...? The gaff
(the yard at the top of the sail) needn't be that heavy, even on a
fairly large sail, and modern materials can bring the weight down,
just as they do with the modern marconi.
For my part, I've found that raising the gaff requires less strength
than raising a marconi sail with the bolt rope in a sail track;
there's less friction to fight against; you don't need a winch to get
it topped up. It is about as fast or a bit faster to raise.
When striking, the weight of the yard is an advantage- it "comes when
called." There is no chance for the sail to jam and hang up,
partially raised. When you want it down, it comes down.
The female half of the couple (fiftyish) who built my boat is about
5'1" and had no difficulty with sail handling. It is less a matter of
the *type* of rig than a matter of how it is set up.
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