Thinking outside the triangle
GALLERY | Click images to enlarge
Here are a couple of new boat designs with rigs that harken back to the days of working sail. The trimaran is a Dick Newick design for a cargo/passenger lug rigged schooner, for the Vaka Fanāua project, the second is a 60m yacht designed to evoke the romantic image of a dhow.
The lug rig was a favorite of Phil Bolger because it combines short spars, sturdiness, simplicity, thrift and aerodynamic power. The first five of these virtues are of little interest to racers but still of considerable value to cruisers and to those who promote a return to working sail. Newick has drawn balanced, standing lugs for this craft, which means it can avoid the lowering or “dipping” of the traditional dipping lug, though the penalty is that the sail will set against the mast on one tack, compromising the sail shape.
The luxury dhow is a settee or ‘arabian lateen’ rigged ketch, with each sail divided at the mast into two sails set on the same yard. The intention is to make the sails set without coming aback on the mast while on the “bad” tack. This would appear to be an unnecessary refinement because the two yards and sails interfere with one another to the point of preventing a tack in the first place.
Phil Bolger wrote about a similar rig, the split lug, in 100 Small Boat Rigs:
There’s another type of rig called the split lug in which the lugsail, with or without a boom, is divided at the mast into two sails set on the same yard… The intention is to make the lugsail set without ever coming aback on the mast. The rig is workable but it’s clumsy to set and take in, and the mast spoils the drive of most of the sail on both tacks. Sir Alan Moore said that this rig “was probably designed by a big-ship sailor unaccustomed to boat sailing, or someone in an office”.
Credits: The Newick cargo tri was found on Boat Bits, the dhow on Sailing Anarchy.
