Ketch Rig . . . Why ?

[double u]

of course there are various "niches" with boats as with biological evolution.
@"arrogance": if communicating that one is sure of ones opinion because it's been proven right a thousand times over is called "arrogance" - so be it. for this case if for any a german saying is very appropriate:
"what does it bother the proud oak, if a pig rubs against it's bark!"
(I'm a fan of BP!)

[daletournier]

Originally Posted by Chris 249

Eric has made disparaging comments about sailors and rulemakers, therefore he is arguably fair game for people to make disparaging comments about his designs. Eric claimed that the standard stayed rig was grossly inefficient and that is was created purely by rating rules "that require that wires hold up the rig". That is simply not true - there are many, many boats that have been built to classes which have no such rules. He claimed that sailors "blindly accepted" triangular mainsails, which is simply wrong - many of us grew up in classes with big roachy mains, and in fact the are not dramatically more efficient as Eric claims. Why Eric ignored that fact is unknown.

I don't know about the sailors you hang out with - the ones I know question many things. They also question the false claims often made about the benefits of unstayed and rotating masts and roachy mains. It might be a bit self-defeating for fans of unstayed rigs to claim that sailors choose their rigs because of being lemmings rather than intelligent people, because the five most popular designs in the world all have unstayed rigs!

The lemming comment was abit to much, I'll take that back , it wasnt written to offend, but obviously it has, I apologize, but I stand by my view that many people that own yachts never question whether the conventional rig is the best cruising rig. Im not a racer never will be, downhill sailing is what i aim for, I don't trust stainless steel and in our modern world I see no reason why we need dozens of ss things to hold our masts up, everyone a potential failure point.
Why would most ever question the conventional rig? Its not like theres many options out there to chose from or they're exposed to.
In regards to the sailors I hang out with, I've been around many cruising sailors over the last eight years as im a fulltime liveaboard, and in my experience few of them have questioned their rig choice or tried anything but the conventional rig, ive sailed thousands of nms on both stayless and conventional.
Spondberg may have views you consider in correct, but ive never heard him speaking disrecpfully, BP is entitled to disagree that's not the issue, its the way he disagrees with anyone that dosent view the world Bob perrys way.

Anyway im done, ive said my piece and won't defend my view further.

[skipmac]

Originally Posted by daletournier

The lemming comment was abit to much, I'll take that back , it wasnt written to offend, but obviously it has, I apologize, but I stand by my view that many people that own yachts never question whether the conventional rig is the best cruising rig.

Can't argue with this. Not just in sailing but in any purchase, many buyers just go for whatever marketing has sold them.

Originally Posted by daletournier

Im not a racer never will be, downhill sailing is what i aim for,

Not a racer either. Have only ever set foot on a racing sailboat once in my life for a day sail. And I also aim for downhill sailing however, the majority of my sailing has been based out of south Florida where it is upwind to almost everywhere except Mexico and from Mexico it is upwind to get home.

Have admired the free standing rig since I first became aware of them when the Freedom 40 came out. Without a doubt there are a number of advantages but upwind performance doesn't seem to be one of them. Until technology reaches the point where a freestanding mast is as rigid as a stayed mast I think I'll have to stick with wires.

[Chris 249]

Dale, Sponberg may not speak disrespectfully, but since he writes of sailors being "insanely conservative" and "blindly acceptant" then it's apparent that he certainly writes with disrespect.

Re the typical sailors' exposure to "unusual" rigs; many sailors started with an unstayed cat/sprit rig or a gunter sloop, then moved to a freestanding cat rig, a freestanding lateen cat rig, a conventional sloop, or an assymetric spinnaker-carrying sloop with a fully battened roachy mainsail. Where I come from, the most popular two-adult dinghy has a fully battened roachy main and jib and a stayed rotating wingmast, whereas the most popular singlehander has an unstayed mast.

So many life-long sailors have switched rigs four or five times before they buy their first yacht, and many of them would never have sailed a 'conventional' rig. It's therefore been proven that they are not scared of "unusual" rigs or changing rigs. That indicates that the choice of a 'conventional' rig for their yachts is not due to conservatism - in fact for a typical British or Australian sailor, the typical yacht rig is something fairly new. If they were conservative, they'd stick with the sort of rig they knew from their dinghy days and where i'm from that would mean a freestanding rig or a wingmast!

The fact that so many people who have years of experience with 'unconventional' rigs choose 'conventional' rigs for yachts seems to indicate that their choice is not due to conservatism or lack of experience with 'unconventional' rigs. By the way, personally I prefer less conservative rigs and I'm currently deciding on how to modify the conventional rig on my new boat; I just respect the choice that others have made.

To get back to the topic (and I apologise for the drift) - if everyone was as conservative in rig choice as some designers claim then 90% or so of cruising boats would still be ketch-rigged like they used to be.

[double u]

unstayed masts are quite rare on the "bluewater-rtw" circuit: in +100.000 nm we saw 2 (TWO), & I can't say I was overly impressed:
one was a freedom on which it took the singlehander forever to get one of the wraparound sails up (Grenada '82) & the second was Lazyjack https://berthonyachtsales.wordpress....rough-berthon/ with an aerorig sailing downwind outside Moorea's northern barrierreef: she rolled like crazy in maybe 18kn of wind & wasn't exposed to the full oceanswells

& btw: ketchrigs are getting rarer for rtwers too, gotta be a reason for this...