Page 332 - The Complete Rigger’s Apprentice

More recent designs, by Gary Mull and oth- but they’re now sufficiently developed and accepted
ers, have made an impression on the designers of that they form a strong part of the rigging spectrum.
conventional rigs. Seeking to make sailing easier,
they’ve adapted Hoyt-ish details: full-battened Tumblehome
mains; smaller, more easily handled running sails; Of course, evolution is a tricky thing; lots of rigs
and aft-led control lines. less radical-seeming than Freedom’s have appeared
With the two approaches to mast design mov- over the years, been tried briefly or at length, and
ing closer in terms of secondary detail, and roughly vanished. It’s hard to tell what will be an advance
equivalent in terms of performance, how is a sailor and what will be a dead end. One concept that, after
to decide which is the better rig? As a rigger who years of halting development, is on its way to the
works primarily with stayed masts, I might have mainstream is the Rotating Wing Mast.
a heavily biased view, but here it is anyway: Well- Ordinary masts create a lot of windage and
designed and well-made unstayed rigs are for people turbulence in front of the mainsail, decreasing its
who are disinclined to be involved with their boats. efficiency. But if the mast is made in an airfoil or
Someone else has done all the work; you just step in “wing” shape it provides turbulence-free lift, aug-
and sail. If something goes wrong, you get someone menting or even completely replacing the sail. Of
else to fix it. Meanwhile, you just sail. course, wing masts need to be able to rotate, so that
A well-designed and well-built stayed rig prac- the leading edge is always facing into the wind, and
tically invites involvement on the part of the sailor. they need to be very narrow to function as efficient
Sure, you can leave all the work to others, and many airfoils. These two factors have created the great-
sailors do. But a stayed rig allows you to see to the est challenges for designers. If the mast rotates, how
health of your rig, allows you to make repairs and can you attach standing rigging to it? And if it’s so
modifications. The rig is built of a series of simple, skinny, how can it keep from buckling under stand-
durable components; if you take care of them, they ing rigging–induced compression?
will take care of you. This turns Hoyt’s argument on
its head: you can inspect and replace or repair every Figure 8-11. Rig details of Scott Sprague’s Tumble-
component, so it won’t fail. home.
Diversity is wealth. Sailors tend to cluster
around styles of sailing, and tend to bad-mouth
other styles, but diversity in rig and hull design has
little to do with superiority and inferiority. It is a
reflection of human diversity. Unstayed rigs have
had a hard time gaining a toehold in the market,

Wing Masts and
Unintended Sailing
A wing mast represents sail area that cannot
be lowered. Under sail it is the ultimate reef; in mast section
extreme conditions there’s no such thing as “run-
ning under bare poles.” You’re stuck with that sail
area, like it or not.
And at anchor, a wing-masted boat will sail all
over the place all by itself, unless you remember to
turn it sideways to the wind, which will effectively
stall it. If a boat has two masts, turn them in oppo-
site directions to keep things quiet.

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