Classic Boat — November 2017

(Barré) #1
CLASSIC BOAT NOVEMBER 2017 45

MAST RAKE
Mast rake is a critical area where aesthetics balance pragmatism.
It can vary between such extremes as the mid-19th-century
American pilot schooner with very little backstaying but
enormous rake to make up for it, and an Essex smack’s topmast
bowsed forward in anticipation of lots of topsail sheet to pull it
back into column. Too much tip aft can generate weather helm.
In practice, however, a boat is tossed around so much at sea that,
so long as rake is kept within reason, other considerations may
prove equally important.
How much rake any original boat needs is best discovered by
examining old photographs. A useful example is the pole-
masted Bristol Channel pilot cutter. She carries no backstays.
Instead, she has ‘swifters’ that run from abaft the lower shrouds
up to the jib halyard blocks. These give the stick all the support
it needs and allow the jib luff to be set up drum-tight against
them. For the arrangement to work, the mast must have some
rake so as to open up the angles aloft. Without it, support
disappears, the setup doesn’t function and dismasting can be the
result. If the rake is right, the rig is rock-solid and you get a
great-looking boat as a spin-off.

BOOM ANGLE
Traditional rigs invariably had mainsails cut so that the boom was
well down at the gooseneck, sweeping up to the clew. For a yacht
with low freeboard, this not only pleases the eye, it stops the sail
from rolling into the water downwind and allows extra scope for
heaving down on the clew when closehauled to control twist in a
sail with no kicker. Anyone more worried about health and safety
than style and performance will stuff the boom way up and parallel
to the deck like a white charter boat. Too many craft are spoiled
like this, sailing around with the main sagging like a barn door
with the top hinge off. Time was when any sailmaker supplying
such a horror would have been clapped in the town stocks so that
every urchin who knew what a boat was meant to look like could
pelt him with the leftovers of Sunday lunch.

OFFSET PROPS
Any pure sailing boat built without an auxiliary engine in mind
almost certainly has too fine a run to accept a centrally sited engine
and stern gear. The result, if a motor is subsequently fitted, will be
an offset propeller.
Some offset props result in handling that is the stuff of
nightmares, but if thoughtfully installed by people who know their
business, some side propellers at least ought to conform to certain

rules. One boat I used to sail was an archetypal case in point. Her
habits with little way on were predictable, but I learned about the
dynamics only after a few years of what are best described as
varied results. The boat drew eight feet and had a right-handed
propeller under her port quarter, sited a few feet forward of a
noble, full-length rudder. As we all know, a right-hand prop
running in reverse shows a natural tendency to throw the stern to
port. This is because it chucks out wash to starboard. With what
amounted to a wall of boat sitting on the prop’s starboard side at
slow speeds, however, the prop’s efforts to cartwheel to port were
in vain. Its wash hit the near-vertical planking and bounced out to
port instead. There was nowhere else for it to go. As it came
gushing out, the stern was tossed in the opposite direction and the
boat spun accordingly. Starboard-side-to was a joy for her. By
‘backing and filling’ ahead and astern with the rudder hard over to
port all the time, she would turn in just a few feet more than her
overall length. It was marvellous.
I only discovered the interesting bit years later when I found
myself careering into the dreaded port-side-to berth without the
option and the wind behind me. In desperation, I threw her into
astern at four knots and, behold, she snuggled her stern in to port
like a Bavaria 37. It seemed unbelievable until I worked out what
happened. At that speed, the prop wash never hit the boat at all, it
just spiralled off the prop and did what it had wanted to all along.
Ever after, when I had to come port-side-to, I arrived at a velocity
which terrified the onlookers, but which I knew was my only hope.
Thank goodness the gearbox never let me down.

BULL ROPES
All boats moored or anchored in tidal waters suffer from blowing
over the ground tackle when the breeze sets in against the stream.
Spoon-bowed yachts lose paint off their topsides and I’ve seen all
sorts of lash-ups with fenders that never quite seem to work. A
plumb-stemmed boat suffers even more. She hardly has to move
before she’s into the buoy or graunching ahead with her anchor
chain chewing the planking above and below the waterline. The
sorry owners of modern yachts can do little about this misery, but
many of us classic boaters are privileged to carry bowsprits, and
the bowsprit holds the answer. Hang a single block from the end of
the spar. Run a line out to it from the foredeck and attach the
lower end to the mooring buoy or the anchor chain. Heave the line
fairly short, depending on bowsprit length, so that when the boat
runs over her anchor, instead of the cable clattering down the
topsides from the bow roller, it is guided silently out of trouble
from the bowsprit end. In heavy conditions, the topmast forestay
may find itself ‘doing a good job’, in which case set up the runners
to stop the rig nodding like the heads of a tennis crowd.

NEW SERIES


BOSUN’S BAG
PRACTICAL TIPS FOR THE TRADITIONAL BOATER

WORDS TOM CUNLIFFE ORIGINAL DRAWING MARTYN MACKRILL

CB353 Bosun Bag TOM TIPS 4.indd 45 26/09/2017 13:06

Free download pdf