BRUCE HALABISKY TIFFANY LONEY BRUCE HALABISKY44 CLASSIC BOAT SEPTEMBER 2016OCEAN-GOING GAFFER
Above, left: Vixen
at anchor on the
west coast of
Madagascar near
some baobab
trees; Bruce
playing a
borrowed guitar
in a Senegalese
village; Solianna
on the beach in
the San Blas
Islands, Panamapoint into the wind with a backed jib – an essential feature of
heaving to. This deficiency can be overcome by the
deployment of drogues and sea anchors but these are
complications that make heaving to more dangerous and
less likely to be initiated in the first place. The gaff rig, by
comparison, will hold her bow up into the wind with a
triple-reefed main and a backed storm jib and stay there for
days at a stretch until conditions improve. In Vixen’s case we
have successfully hove to several times in over 70 knots of
wind and proven that not to be the upper limit.
One unique feature of Vixen among ocean-crossing
yachts is that she carries neither wind-vane nor electronic
autohelm. And, no, we do not hand steer for weeks on end.
Vixen has phenomenal directional stability which, when
augmented with a sheet-to-tiller system, enables her to
steer herself (see Classic Boat, September 2008). The gaff
rig is an important element in this set up because the low
centre of effort of the sails doesn’t move excessively to
leeward when the boat heels in a gust. In other words,
Vixen doesn’t have the tendency to shoot up into the wind
with every puff; a tendency which would require
complicated machinery to counter.
The final, and most enjoyable, feature of the gaff rig is
its powerful reaching abilities off the wind. It seems strange
that the modern offshore cruising sailing boat touts its
ability to sail upwind when the majority off offshore
passages are downwind or on a reach. Perhaps this is a
result of the racing scene influencing the design of cruising
yachts which might hope to crossover to do some
Wednesday night round-the-buoy racing.
My argument is: get the right tool for the job. Get a gaff
rig with a long boom hanging over the stern and a
bowsprit out the front; a rig that will accelerate in the
gusts instead of just healing over further and thus
needing to be reefed sooner.
Get a gaff rig that loves to sail with the tradewinds of
the world; leave the high-performance upwind sailing for
your friends back home who are hoping to be the first to
the windward mark on a Wednesday night.and values handmade things. In Vixen’s case – being an
uncomplicated 34-footer – I would say our simple lifestyle
attracted the like-minded people we wanted to meet.WHY GAFF?
If there was any one thing in Vixen’s overall appearance that
implied that she was the antithesis of performance I would
guess that it would be the gaff rig. Aside from large
sail-training vessels people don’t seem to cross oceans
anymore with the gaff rig. Even many classic yachts
originally designed with a gaff rig have been converted to
the triangular Marconi version. This is a shame because
it is on the tradewind passages of the world’s oceans
that the gaff rig does so well.
The gaff rig trades the long luff and tall mast of the
Marconi rig for a short mast and long boom to achieve an
equivalent sail area resulting in a low-aspect sail plan which
is ideal for offshore passages. I believe Vixen’s gaff rig to be
the superior offshore choice for three reasons: safety,
directional stability and power on a reach.
I was surprised on our voyage how often I encountered
sailors who had lost a mast overboard. Many times these
de-mastings occurred in 15 knots of wind or less and the
failure could be traced to a single corroded stainless steel
terminal. There is not a lot of redundancy built into the
modern high-aspect rig in which a relatively weak extruded
aluminium mast is supported by a minimum of stays which
are subjected to corrosion which is difficult to inspect.
Vixen’s gaff rig, by comparison, is low-tension and
overstayed. With a short mast the lever arm pushing the hull
over has less force and the mast itself is of solid 7in-diameter
spruce. I suspect in light to moderate winds Vixen’s mast
would stand with no stays at all. Vixen’s parcelled and served
galvanized rigging is less susceptible to work hardening
and much easier to inspect.
The other important safety feature of the gaff rig is its
ability to heave to in a gale. The Marconi rig’s centre of effort,
unfortunately, moves progressively forward with each
successive reef until it is nearly impossible for the vessel to