Years ago, I spent quite a bit of time on a variety of Ketches. When I was in Savannah I was hired to redesign the deck hardware layout, rudder and keel for a ketch that handled quite poorly in order to improve its handling. As a result I spent a bunch of time sailing on that boat as we were doing ''before and after'' sea trials under a wide range of conditions and sail combinations. In order to get a bench mark for what was typical ketch behavior and what was problems that were unique to that boat, I also spent a bunch of time sailing on other ketch rigged boats that were in the area. After all of the time that I spent doing that project, I was invited by a number of owners to sail on a variety of other ketch rigged boats in order to see if I could help them sail their boats better. I also came very close to buying a 32 foot ketch that was for sail pretty cheaply but opted out because of the poor sailing characteristics beating and running and at the extreme ends of the windrange. It is from that period that I formed my own opinion of the ketch
rig. That said my opinions eems to be pretty much in
line with most recently published material on Ketch
rigs.
Jeff