BRUCE HALABISKY46 CLASSIC BOAT SEPTEMBER 2016OCEAN-GOING GAFFER
WHY A CLASSIC HULL SHAPE?
A classic hull is the natural shape on which to land the gaff
rig for offshore voyaging. The long straight keel and deep
forefoot will enhance the rig’s inherent self-steering ability;
the outboard hung rudder, the heavy displacement and the
deep keel will also help the boat to heave to as an added
safety feature. I remember once watching, at Nanny Cay in
Tortola, the owner of a modern fin-keeled sloop tie his
inflatable off to the bow and then reverse down the whole
length of the marina, with a 20 knot crosswind. Then he did a
couple of right hand turns and docked the boat on a tiny
pontoon. You are never going to do this with a classic hull.
If you plan on going into a lot of marinas then this may be
a concern. If, however, you intend to sail around the world
then this inability to manoeuvre is just what you want
because it means your boat will go in a straight line. Vixen
does not like to turn and backing up under power leaves a
lot to fate but she is very good at going straight for
thousands and thousands of miles. Even without our
sheet-to-tiller system Vixen will hold her course for an
impressive amount of time.
The long keel is also what you want when sailing through
the lobster pots of Maine or the nets off the coast of Senegal
or the fish weirs of the Malacca Straight. Getting caught in
any kind of net on a boat with a fin keel and a spade rudder
can result in disaster. Just the thought of getting in the water
at night with a knife to free a complicated hull shape makes
me shudder. Often these nets are unlit and sometimes they
are drifting on the open ocean. Over the years and despite
my best efforts, Vixen has sailed over many nets, lines and
other fishing gear and every time she has slipped free
because there is nothing underwater to get caught.
One feature of classic boats that is not often talked
about is the amount of standing headroom possible with a
deep draft keel and low freeboard. On Vixen we have 6ft 8in
of standing headroom in the interior while maintaining a
low freeboard and cabin. We are living deep in the keel with
our feet just above the iron ballast. On a fin keel boat there
is nowhere to go for headroom but up, so the boats need to
be high-sided – sometimes to a shocking degree – to obtain
standing headroom below.
I mention freeboard, here, because staying in one place
at anchor is much more difficult with a high-sided yacht
than one that has low freeboard. On Vixen we carry robustanchoring gear, but our real secret to not dragging is Vixen’s
low profile and resistance to ‘tacking’ while at anchor. We do
carry 250ft of^3 / 8 th-inch chain which helps Vixen to stay put
while anchored and that brings me to another factor in
favour of the traditional hull shape: it can carry the weight.
Vixen weighs over 13 tons. A similar modern fin-keeled boat
might weigh half of that. To sail around the world you need
a lot of stuff. There is safety gear and food and fuel and
water – it all adds up and ultimately all this stuff is a smaller
percentage of the overall weight for Vixen than for a
similar-sized fin-keeled boat. Vixen can carry all the things
we need with minimal change to her sailing characteristics.THE FINAL ARGUMENT FOR THE
CLASSIC GAFFER
So now you’ve heard my arguments for the voyaging classic
gaffer but I know there is still a part of you that resists and
wonders: “If it is such a great set up why aren’t more people
doing it?” I lay aside all my rationalization and logic and can
appeal to you only with the beauty of a perfectly realized
sheerline, or the image of an audaciously long bowsprit
awash with seafoam, or a finely carved teak block gleaming
in the sun. There is something to be said for sailing around
the world with a certain amount of style and class.
On our final voyage from Hawaii to Victoria we had a
deteriorating weather forecast – building seas and an
oncoming gale – a couple of weeks after leaving Molokai.
Solianna and Seffa Jane were safely sleeping down below
but still, after all these years of crossing oceans, I was
anxious. It was early morning and although the sky was dark,
a hole in the clouds allowed the sun to shine through bright
and strong. Amid the tumultuous seas the sunbeams lit up
the waves and then landed on the leeward varnished
mainsheet block. I remember that block as a striking
contradiction to the chaos all around; a comforting
contradiction. Here was a product of wood, metal and
human ingenuity that had worked for over 60 years during
two trips around the world while mother nature threw at it
everything of which she was capable.
And, still, it resiliently did its simple job as well, or better,
than any modern racing gear and certainly looked to be
anything but the antithesis of performance.For more on Vixen’s voyage visit: vixensvoyage.comAbove: Solianna
in New York City
during a sail-by
of the Statue of
LibertyVIXEN
LOA
34ft (10.36m)
SAIL AREA
683sq ft (63m^2 )
BUILT
1952