Sloop Ketch or Yawl?
Thursday, April 30th, 2009
Which rig should i choose to cruise?
There are many factors to choosing your perfect cruising sailboat. Rig type is a big one. You will find sailors cruising with almost every type of rig imaginable and twice as many opinions as to why their choice is the best. Every sailor’s tastes are different. You need to decide which rig fits your sailing style.
Sailing Styles:
- Fast and Furious – You enjoy tweaking your leach-line and vang to squeeze out every last knot. You enjoy the competition of the regatta and are willing to sacrifice comfort and convenience for speed and agility. You don’t mind working to sail your boat and enjoy the fulfillment such work can bring. “I can point higher then you”.
- Steady Eddy – You enjoy making good time but are willing to give up a bit of agility and performance to ease the fatigue. A little work is okay, but you’d prefer not to make constant changes to the routine.
- Slow and Comfortable – A few extra days on a passage don’t bother you as long as you are more comfortable. Falling off a bit more than necessary to smooth the beat is the way to go. You would prefer minimal work in order to sail your vessel — minimal sail changes.
- We go where the wind takes us – Performance is the last thing you are worried about. You would rather change your destination than put up with a nasty upwind pounding. “The journey is more important than the destination”. You have nowhere to be and forever to get there.
Common Sailboat Rigs:
- Sloop – A single masted sailboat. Sloops come in many variations although they all have one mast. While sloops are the only choice for “Fast and Furious” cruisers, they also suit the needs of other sailing styles. With tall rigs and large-roach full-batten mains, sloop rigs are the top performers in high-tech races like the Whitbred, Volvo Ocean Race, and America’s Cup. They are also found on heavier low-tech cruising boats. This is a very versatile rig, but other rigs may have some advantages for your sailing style.
- Ketch – A two masted sailboat. The Ketch rig is very handy for the cruising sailor. Having two masts can offer additional sail area for light wind without the need to fly a spinnaker. It also reduces the size of the individual sails on a given boat. The main and genoa of a ketch rigged vessel are smaller and more easily managed by a small or non athletic crew. The Ketch cannot point as high into the wind as a sloop due to the mizzen (the aft sail), but the mizzen offers more sail combinations for various conditions. The Ketch is a great choice for many cruisers. We were able to work Chinook into many marinas and tight anchorages (and back out again) under sail alone. We were able to do this with a crew of two or even single-handed.
- Yawl – A two masted sailboat. Yawls are not as common as Ketches, and there are varying opinions as to what makes a boat a yawl versus a ketch rig. In general yawls have a smaller mizzen in proportion to the size of the mainsail. Yawls offer less advantage over sloops when it comes to sail size and manageability, but loose less pointing ability than do ketches.
- Schooner – A two (or more) masted sailboat where the forward mast is shorter than the aft. The schooner rig is an old design that still works well today. It is not as common as the sloop, ketch, or yawl. They are usually gaff rigged (meaning that there is a large spar that gets raised at the top of the mast and the sails are not triangular as in the above designs). Schooners are beautiful, but can be more difficult for a smaller crew and sacrifice tremendous amounts of performance. The schooner rig is best suited to larger boats and more a choice for traditionalists on classic boats, or very large yachts.
- Junk – The term “junk rig” speaks more to the sail type like gaff-rigged. It is found on boats with one, two, or more masts. Sails for junk rigged boats are easier for the cruising sailor to make for them selves, they can also be easy to manage. Although there are many spars in each sail, they can be set up easily as self-tacking and reefed easily. Because of the sail design, junk rigged boats also loose a lot of performance upwind when compared to their marconi counterparts. Junk rigs are usually the choice for shoestring cruisers who fall into the “We go where the wind takes us” crowd.
