Yawl

Full disclosure: I think a yawl is the second prettiest rig on a yacht (first is reserved for Schooners). 

Yawls are actually very old rigs, originally called Jol and were mainly used on fishing boats. This rig gained immense popularity in the 1960s thanks to a loophole in the racing rules at the time. This is the Yawl that we know today and the Yawl that we will be focusing on in this article.  

A yawl is a two masted sailboat where the aft mast is shorter than the forward mast. The second mast is also set aft of the rudder post. 

This definition is easy enough to comprehend but a little tricky to put into practice on a yacht in the distance since you can’t see the rudder or rudder post! 

While the rudder may be obscured by the seas, a yawl is still very distinguishable thanks to the fact that it has a normal sized rig and then a tiny little sail stuck on the back of the boat and hanging off the stern. 

The mizzen in a Yawl actually provides no forward drive, but instead simply balances the sailplan. The mizzen sail is trimmed not for power but for balance. Easing the mizzen will make it less effective and produce less weather helm. Over trimming the mizzen will make it more effective and produce more weather helm. The sail should honestly be thought of more as an air rudder than a sail.  

The Yawl was also favored for blue water cruising because reliable windsteering still wasn’t an easily purchasable commodity. Setting the mizzen on a particular wind angle would ensure that the boat would hold that course. If the boat veered from that course, the mizzen would then take the wind and push the stern back onto the correct course. This meant that a set wind angle could be held for long periods of time without any help from the crew or captain.  

In racing circles, the Yawl was favored because the sail area of the mizzen mast was not counted. The mizzen sail was not counted because it produced no forward drive, but a staysail or spinnaker could be set on the mizzen as well and that sail could produce a lot of power off the wind. All of this sail area was not counted in the race rating for that particular yacht, so this was literally ”Free Sailarea” for these yachts. 

As with any boat design that is race driven, as soon as the rules changed, so did everyone’s favor of these design characteristics. The yawl soon fell out of favor and quickly became a relic of the past, replaced by the next rule loophole.

Mizzen Staysail

The mizzen on modern boats is not really thought of as a “power producer” but more of as a balancer. The mizzen mast is often jokingly referred to as the “radar mount” or “wind gen mount”. 

While the mizzen sail itself isn’t often thought of as a powerful sail, it does lend itself to the availability of adding power in a little know form: the mizzen headsail.  

Mizzen headsails are attached at three points and provide lots of power when sailing off the wind. The head is attached to the mizzen, the tack is attached to the aft bast of the main mast, and the clew is sheeted through the end of the mizzen boom. 

The sail is set flying, with no stay supporting its luff. As a result, easing the halyard will allow the sail to billow and generate a lot more power! 

The Center of Effort (CE) will be moved aft with the mizzen staysail, so it is important to make sure that the geometric center (where the CE is found) is as far forward as possible. This is why yawls perform better than ketches with mizzen headsails; the mizzen is very small and set far aft, meaning the the majority of the sail will be found forward on its way to the mast.

Another important point with the mizzen staysail is that by easing the mizzen sheet to the mizzen boom, the clew of the mizzen staysail will move forward which will also help to move the CE forward and help fight weather helm.  

Mizzen staysails are incredible power generators but care must be taken with them to ensure that they do not cause too much weather helm and thus disrupt the balance of the sailplan. It is important to always couple the mizzen staysail with a very large and far forward headsail that will induce a healthy amount of lee helm into the equation, helping to cancel out any weather helm generated by the mizzen staysail. A large genoa may seem like a good idea for this task, but if the genoa is sheeted too far aft, the CE will be brought back behind the mast and actually induce weather helm which would then compliment the weather helm of the mizzen staysail, causing the yacht to “Round Up” into the wind.

Additional sails should always be flown cautiously and judiciously. They can both create a lot of power, as well as a lot of problems. 

Masthead Vs. Fractional Rigs

The main distinction between these two popular rigs is how far up does the headstay go?  

To the top: Masthead

Part of the way up: Fractional

Fractional rigs offer a smaller headsail luff but a much more adjustable mast. Since the headstay doesn’t meet the backstay at the head of the mast, the section between the two stays acts as a lever which can effectively bend the mast to tune the sails. All this equates to much higher performance from the boat. 

Typically, fractional rigs are seen on racing boats while mast head rigs are seen on slower cruising boats.  

Keel Art

Maddie has always painted a mural on our keel. Our first haul out of our voyage was in the first week, and that is when Maddie began this tradition. That first mural was done with topside paint and quickly grew many things! That was a valuable lesson to Maddie to paint in bottom paint. 

The second mural was in Florida and we applied what we had learned! Seeing the mural while snorkeling was very awesome.  

This, our third mural, was once again painted by Maddie the morning before we splashed in the Azores.  

Birds!

Two Headsail Setups

Have you ever wondered about different types of two headsail setups  on a sailboat?

There are actually three different types. Cutter, Slutter, and Solent.  

A cutter has the mast set aft of 40% line of the boat, meaning that 40% of the boat is bow and 60% is stern. Since the mast is farther aft, there is more space for headsails and that means that you can easily fit two different headsails on the bow and fly them at the same time.  

If the mast is forward of the 40% line, the boat is a Sloop, but a sloop only has one headsail. When you add a second headsail, the boat becomes either a Slutter if the inner headsail is set on the deck like a Cutter, but runs all the way up to the masthead. A Solent has the inner headsail set just aft of the headsail, making it a sloop with two different headsail options.  

Slutters and Solents don’t work well at flying both headsails at the same time like a cutter can, except when Sailing dead down wind with the headsails set wing on wing. 

Why you might be wondering why the inner sail leads to the top of the mast on both of these sloop combinations? Well, there are two reasons: 1. The space for the inner sail is so small that if it doesn’t lead to the masthead, it would be too small to have any effect. Leading it to the masthead gives it the extra sail area that makes that sail effective. 

The second reason: 2. by leading the sail to the masthead, the counter loads are supported by the backstay meaning they don’t need to rig additional running backstays. 

These are the different options available to sailboat that wants to have two headsails. Either already be a cutter or be a sloop with a Slutter or a Solent rig.