Classic Boat — November 2017

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