Ketch rig

[carib99]

I have a ketch rig Coronado35 and would like to better understand the proper use of that rig. I''ve found no information in books on sail trim, and my racing friends have sloop rigs. Yet many cruising boats are ketch rigged. Any help will be appreciated.

[SY Sayang]

I have a Coronado 35 ketch as well.

From the literature I read, there seems to be no good reason to rig a boat of that size as a ketch, and frankly speaking, I do not see much of performance improvement, if the mizzen is up. As a rule of thumb, the mizzen should be sheeted a little closer than the main.

I love the looks of the ketch; the real performance advantage, however, will come only, when one day I will rig a mizzen staysail.

The advantage I see already now: when the wind is piping up, I just drop the main, and have a balanced rig with jib/genoa and mizzen.

I would love to see further comments, my experience with the ketch rig is limited as well.

[SY Sayang]

I have a Coronado 35 ketch as well.

From the literature I read, there seems to be no good reason to rig a boat of that size as a ketch, and frankly speaking, I do not see much of performance improvement, if the mizzen is up. As a rule of thumb, the mizzen should be sheeted a little closer than the main.

I love the looks of the ketch; the real performance advantage, however, will come only, when one day I will rig a mizzen staysail.

The advantage I see already now: when the wind is piping up, I just drop the main, and have a balanced rig with jib/genoa and mizzen.

I would love to see further comments, my experience with the ketch rig is limited as well.

[carib99]

I''ve experimented with using the Mizzen to achieve a neutral helm with some minor success.

Trimming sails on a ketch is like most boats you start at the bow and trim aft. Ketches generally are pretty low tech rigs with wide shroud bases. As a result it is pretty hard to very hard to over trim a genoa on a ketch upwind. Next comes the main which should be trimmed so that the Batten teletales flow. Since the mizzen represents a sizeable percentage of the overall sail plan, you need to be careful upwind not ot over trim the mainsail and dump extra turbulent air on the mizzen. Mizzens often end up being over trimmed to take the luff out. A little luff can be tolerated.

As the breeze bulds the mainsail traveler should be lowered to leeward and the genoa lead moved slightly aft.

As you crack off of the wind, a ketch begins to come into its own. It is important not to overtrim the sails on a reach. Use you vangs in the mainsail and mizzen as twist generally means that the foot of the sail ends up being too tight and sends back too much dirty air onto the mizzen.

Once you start to broad reach the mizzen begins to blanket the mainsail and theirs not much you can do for it except rig a mizzen staysail.

As every one noted, in heavy air you can drop the mainsail and sail jib and jigger. Most ketches will hove to Jib and jigger as well.

Jeff

[hongkongsailing]

When I bought Malarky 2 years ago there was a sail bag marked mezzin stay. The sail is very light and the color design matches a flasher which also came with the boat so Iassume it is mezzin stay. Can not figure out how to rig it. They say is goes between the Main and mezzin mast. If you have any knowledge of this or know where I can find litereature, I would appeciate it. Malarky is a Morgan OIC 49'' ketch 1976 model.
thanks

Mizzen staysail are flown on reaches. They typcially have a halyard at the forward top of the Mizzenmast and their tack is lead to the deck about even with the base of the main mast. They are rigged in a number of ways but typically they are attached to a pad eye to weather of the mast base on the deck or even at the rail. Occasionally you see their tacks rigged to a pad eye at the base of the mast or to the genoa sheet tracks. They typically have a single sheet that is usually lead to snatch block on the deck near the leeward corner of the transom.

The sail is flown on longish reaches and is dropped and raised on each jibe since sail prevents the mainsail from beingable to jibe. These are real workhorse sails adding a lot of speed in the right conditions. Try it, you''ll like it.

Jeff

[hongkongsailing]

Thanks Jeff. We tried it once but did not seem right but it sounds like we were close. I will now take out my sailing glossary, look up all your terms and figure this out.

I am new to this and my boat boy only speaks cantonese. This should be an interesting weekend.
thanks
SAL

[joejupiter]

Looking to buy a boat and have checked out the coronado. I like the large aft cabin. Please give me an honest opinion of the boat. Likes as well as dislikes. Would this be a good boat for extended world cruising?

[Jeff_H]

No, these would not be a good boat world cruising. These were mediocre designs, poorly engineered, cheaply built and are now quite up in years. If you find one in good shape, and have it surveyed it might be OK for the Bahamas but to try any kind of long distance cruising you are looking at the wrong boat for the job.
Jeff