Gaff vs Bermudan

Lady Christina coming up from behind

There are 43 examples of the Finesse 24 on the Group boat list, and only 5 are listed as gaff cutters (with one more in the process of conversion). That’s just 14% of the total. Finesse 21s don’t fare much better, with 18% of the listed boats being gaffers. I don’t know how representative this is of the original proportion of boats, but it’s worth asking the question- does the gaff option work well?

Josie showing a clean pair of heels

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My starting point is the Maurice Griffiths sketch of a gaff rig, referenced in Nick Ardley’s book ‘The Jottings of a Thames Estuary Ditch-Crawler’. I believe that this sketch is held by the National Maritime Museum. Although the second-hand mast, spars and sails that I bought for Lady Christina originally came from a Folkboat, the mainsail that came with the package looked very much as if it was made up to the Griffiths pattern.

Some statistics: the sail area usually attributed to the Finesse 24 is 259 sq ft, although some foresails are on a forestay from the stem and some from the end of a bowsprit, so this figure is open to dispute! Without a suitable boat to nip out and measure, I reckon that the mainsail in the Bermudan rig is about 53% of the total sail area- say, 140 sq ft- and that the peak is about 27ft above the base of the mast tabernacle.

The Griffiths sketch has the peak at roughly the same height, but the main is listed as 205 sq ft. With just the foresail of 67 sq ft, the proportion of the combined 272 sq ft aft of the mast would be 75%. The main is always a big sail in a gaff rig, but this would suggest a lot of weather helm. In fact, the jib would need to be deployed in order to get near a good balance. With the addition of the 58 sq ft working jib, the proportion aft of the mast is 62%, but the total sail area is 330 sq ft – more than a quarter as big again as the Bermudan.

In our first tentative sailing with Lady Christina, we found that (perhaps unsurprisingly) that we had a better balance when the mainsail was on its first reef. This is why we had a new mainsail made (by Steve Hall) at a modest 154 sq ft. With our working foresail and jib, we have a combined sail area of – a coincidence here – 259 sq ft, and there is 59% aft of the mast. One big difference is that the gaff peak is only 21ft above the tabernacle base, a reduction of 6ft. This makes for a sail that is easy to lower and stow, and can usually be used (loose-footed) without a reef and therefore in its best aerodynamic shape.

Halliards on the coach roof: 1-0 to the Bermudan

On a fine day last September (2019) we had an opportunity to match the Bermudan rig of Pieter and Ineke Shulting’s Josie (sail 63) against Lady Christina (sail 52). A fine Force 3 was wafting across the Lauwersmeer in the north of the Netherlands and we left the Lauwersoog harbour together. Josie soon had her sails set. The gaff rig halliards, however, all come down to belay pins on the tabernacle, and raising or lowering sails calls for a trip onto the coach roof. Not easy if you were single-handed! However, the loose-footed gaff mainsail does provide plenty to play with: the outhaul to vary the sail depth, the peak halliard to take the creases out, and- if you need to de-power- you can drop the peak (provided that you remember to set the topping lift). On this occasion we were using our larger foresail (90 sq ft) which overlaps the mast and sets outside the shrouds, giving us 244 sq ft without the jib.

The gaff is neither better nor worse- just different

How did the gaff perform? To my relief, it had a comparable pace and could also point as high as the Bermudan. So there may not be a performance penalty to going gaff – but there is a lot more dancing on the roof…

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