Schooner Designs

[Alan D. Hyde]

Historically, the slim, slippery, plank-on-edge boats were thought to be the fastest, at least in England. In contrast, the "America" represented some of the thinking as to hull form in the States at that time.

Moving way ahead, reducing wetted surface became an obsession, forefoots were cut away, and full keels were pretty much abandoned in the quest for speed. The Fastnet Race showed what can happen when this sort of thing was carried too far.

Narrowing the discussion a little by talking of schooners, it is interesting how much variation is seen in successful hull types. Coaster I, Mistral, and Intrepid , for example, all have very different beam to length ratios, firmer or slacker bilges, different keel configurations, and so on.

Some of the resulting differences in performance are right out of Skene's, about what anyone would expect. Beamier hulls tend to have more initial stability, for example. But sometimes, our expectations mislead us, and experience is a better teacher.

I think I may have an average amount of "common sense," but I don't have enough knowledge of yacht design or enough experience of sailing these different types to sort out the effects on speed and sea-keeping qualities of these variations. Obviously, some questions have been raised about the stability of one of Cueller's designs in a recent WoodenBoat, although there are additional factors in the case discussed that make decisive conclusions somewhat debatable.

I'd be interested in the thoughts of those who have more knowledge and experience in relation to these things than I do. That leaves it pretty wide-open, I think...

Alan

[ 04-02-2002, 10:33 AM: Message edited by: Alan D. Hyde ]

[ken mcclure]

For a time I had thoughts of designing my own boat. I spent (literally) thousands compiling a complete library on design, building and repair and read it all. Including Chapelle, Skene, McIntosh, Pardey and more.

The more I read, and the more designs I looked at, the more I realized I don't know. That's education.

I wonder how much of the "successful" designs are simply the result of having tried enough things that didn't work vs. scientific study!

What I do know is that when I look at some designs they just look right.

[Ian McColgin]

I like Marjajh's (spelling most approxomate) "Seaworthiness: The Forgotten Factor" on this.

To my eye excess beam in the middle with pinched ends and hard bilges form the big culprits. You can see it just handling a wee tupperware cruising thing where just a bit of real wind puts her up on her bilge cavetating the rudder and sometimes even the keel.

Now, my rocketship kayak is long and skinny and directionally so stabile that to turn I have to heel her over to at least 45 degrees, lifting bow and stern out of the water, and brace sweep the turn. Trescool for a paddle boat. Bad plan for a sail boat.

On the other hand, Grana is long and skinny but keeps her bow and stern in the water no matter what the heel. The rudder never cavitates. As she heels she will pick up a little weather helm - not that you'd have to counter so much as she'll just hunt upwind a little if you hold the helm quietly.

Grana is not a normal schooner. Goblin, an Alden 43" CB was more typical of one type of schooner. She's not deep and narrow, like Mya, who I'll come to next. 43' LOD, 33' LWL, 12-6 B, 4-6 BdU, c.8" BdD. A centerboard's location really makes the whole hull act like one with a cutaway forefoot.

She had the classic powerful schooner hull to stand up to the powerful schooner rig - the yacht version of the powerful fishing schooner and very unlike the less powerful in rig and hull pinkeys and such, which I'll not explore here since I've only very limited experience with them. The press of her sail just puts the whole boat down. We'd sometimes scream along with solid water breaking on the coach house just a few inches to leeward of the foremast. She never felt like she was suddenly loosing stability, as you might expect with the decks under and no more reserve bouyance happening. I guess she picked up stability as she came down on her ends, streatching the waterline.

Mya is more a deep shape and can stand up to more canvass than Goblin's model. She's truely fine in the bows and appears to accelerate when she mounts a wave. She may well be the finest schooner of her inches in the world.

Both schooners have so much horsepower in the rig (as long as you're not pinching to weather) that they can actually race with a foul bottom and not suffer unduely. This is a stark contrast to Grana, who really needs a clean bottom. The hull form is plenty slippery but not 'powerful' and the rig is not especially powerful. She's fast and easy with a bit of wind, but nothing like the surge of raw guts you get with a schooner of the fishing type.

Anyway - hull and rig interact.

G'luck

[MAGIC's Craig]

The type of sailing planned, the waters to be sailed in and the experience level(s) of the owners all can lead to some pretty interesting changes in a designer's thinking for an appropriate hull shape.

If someone approaches with a desire to sail quickly in protected waters, no need for cruising stores, wants lots of kites, the shape I might create for him would be leaner and lighter than one for someone who comes looking for an able offshore boat, capable of hauling a family and all of its gear for a cruise of extended duration. Occasionally, someone even ponders a sturdy version capable of actually hauling small cargo and this would lead to another, heavier displacement, perhaps slacker-bilged hull.
If the rig is to be light, then perhaps the bow can be finer, but if there is to be much top hamper/weight aloft, then to avoid excessive pitching, the bow will need more bouyancy.

Lyle Hess's designs are example of yachts which can ghost very well indeed when kept on their feet, even though they are classified as medium to heavy displacement.
Heeled waterlines which are hugely asymetrical are also often indicative of a "hard-mouthed" boat to sail and too lean a bow, coupled with heavy quarters can generate an un-acceptable amount of weather helm.
Cut away the forefoot too much - in a schooner - and her ability to heave to might well be compromised.

The rig's layout, center of balance, aspect ratio, and the cut of the sails all add their variables as well. As always, the various factors which decide the shape of a hull are balancing act for a designer and I agree that there is still a lot of room for the "art" in a schooner's design.

[cdragon]

Covey Island, wood/epoxy builders who have built some lovely boats including the big schooner "Tree of Life", have on their website a new schooner they are about to build with lines quite similar to a pilot cutter type-she looks like a neat boat and I suspect will be fast and seaworthy-worth a look, let us know if you place an order (56' on deck I believe)...

[N. Scheuer]

Speaking of DESIGNING fast schooners, I always like the yarn about the BLUENOSE, which apparently was built WITHOUT a pair of ribs in the bows which had been drawn.

Moby Nick

[imported_Sean]

If you want a look at a real traditional cargo schooner go to www.oceanyachtsales.com (http://www.oceanyachtsales.com) and look for the 53 ft topsail schooner.

Its cool !

[johnw]

Actually, the reason the plank-on-edge type evolved in England was that they rated better under the cubic contents rule, which in England counted beam against the rating twice. In effect, they were trading beam for length. As soon as that stopped being the rule, the English started designing wider boats. Even under the American version of the cubic contents rule, these boats rated better than the wide American boats, which is part of the reason for the success of Madge, the Scottish cutter that started the cutter craze in America. When the English challenged for the America's Cup with plank-on-edge cutters, the "compromise" type that evolved in America proved faster.

As for schooners, my observation is that they need more sail area for the same hull than a sloop would need, because the rig's not that efficient going to windward. On the other hand, you've still got all that sail up when you put the boat on a reach and the rig does become efficient. Plus, the rig is easier to handle than a sloop with the same drive, because the area of individual sails is smaller. I've sailed on a pinky schooner with 1,000 square feet of sail and not a single winch, and I know the owner sometimes single hands the boat. Many modern schooners are undercanvassed, which may have something to do with the way the virtues of the rig have been forgotten by so many people. Properly rigged and sailed, schooners perform quite well.

[SailBoatDude]

A schooner is a cutter with a mast in the middle of the foretriangle . . . Bolger

He is so right. Hull form in a schooner is a bit different, as they (the vast majority) were designed to work for a living under a set of wishes, desires, needs, can live withs, the budget and all the above. Crafted into a set of compromises. All designs are a fine tuning of the compromises needed to get the desired results. Most designs don't stray too far off in one direction in the "lets explore this avenue" as it can be a flop. When sticking closer to known design forms, can yield a yacht that does what the client asked for.

Now, with the cad work available, schooner design could come to a more advanced level, but sloops, cutters and ketches are the rag and the call for a schooner is few and far between, limiting it's natural development, much as wire rope did it in a century ago.

The schooner rig developed as a result of wanting to go faster, as the single stick boats got too tall for their natural fiber headstays and sagged way too much for reasonable performance. The rig was divided up into lower areas and the tension problem was put off for a few exciting generations.

With advent of the "telephone pole" rigs the single sticker's got their chance and haven't looked back. Material advancement in rigging wire all but stopped farther development in the schooner rig, as the boats that historically have seen the money spent on development have been the racers and the schooner was out of the loop in this regard.

So now back to the original questions, we're looking at designs that basically stopped advancing 100 years ago. At that time in history, a lot of crazy ideas were being tried on the then popular schooner rig. Some examples stood out more then others, some just did their jobs and others were left to find their own way. Each design exercised a new trick or two making her fit the bill the client was footing.

Building a schooner myself, I've often wondered how the natural progression of their development would have gone. I've tried to incorporate the best of the qualities found in them and fix some of the flaws. Divided appendages, shallower forefoot, lower aspect main in relation to the fore, lower CG, etc. The hydro stats look good, but the proof will be in the floating right side up thing we all so enjoy much. My boat is rather fine ended and has a beam/length ratio of 4:1, she's pretty shoalish at 5'4" using Scheel effects at the bottom of her fin. She has a lovely bow (Indian head) without a sprit and the sail area is divided very evenly, using a gaff fore and bimu main. This brings the CE forward as I've lost the area forward of the bow and the fore can then power the boat at near hull speed alone in easy air. A small transom with 43 degree cant makes for a fine endding. She has a bit of a belly, as I had to get stowage somwhere, but the run is clean and she should leave a smooth wake. She radius chined, sheet goods with a bit of tumble home worked in fore and aft, just 'cause it looked good. Bulkheads, sawn frames with stringers of oak, ply decking, silver spruce (birds mouth is planned) sticks with solid fur booms and aluminum gaff. Her D/L is 228 and she should be pretty quick to get up a foaming bone. SA/D is 16.2 without the between the sticks stuff or over lapping heads. She's intended for shorthanded work so This narrow a boat with a short crew shouldn't have a lot of cloth up under normal condisions. Because she's so trim she doesn't need a lot of sail to get her to hull speed, nor a lot of fuel to power her.

[Andrew]

SBD, how about a pic or lines?

[SailBoatDude]

Been asked before, though a friend was to scan some photos for me, not yet. I don't have a digital camera so . . . will soon. I do have video, but haven't a clue how to convert for posting, and am pretty sure I don't need to know. The video is really for me, when I'm feeling like nothing is getting done, I go back a month and see what's been done and it shuts my mouth (not an easy task)

[Ian McColgin]

There really has been a lot of development in both the hull and rig for schooners. It's just not as technowiz dominated by rating rules. I see three different trends that produce very different schooners.

Two are dominated by powerful rigs.

One version of this goes for speed - like Mya and some really extreme units I saw from Canada that were nearly plank on edge in the width but very long ended, cutaway forefoot and well slung deep keel - which means a thinnish slippery hull that still has power to stand up to the rig.

The other, often shoal draft and sometimes a scow hull, really emphasises load carrying, is beamy and relies on form stability to stand up to her rig. This, even if quite modern in design, is easily mistaken for 19th century.

The other approach, which only sometimes works, is to look down-home funkey but to have trimmed out the hull lines enough that the boat will move ok with a minimal rig. Some of the contemporary pinky recreations do this rather well and some are simply bad boad. Or the designer might abandon the traditional look but go for the most hull with the least (and most easily handled) horsepower in the rig. Grana - the LFH Marco Polo design - is a good example of this. A truely great, easy to handle boat in a breeze. Honestly, she won't move at all unless the wind's at least 8 to 10.

G'luck

[johnw]

Well, there have been some experiments. One of Tabarly's boats in the 1970s was an aluminum schooner with an IOR hull, fin keel and an innovative rig. The foresail was supported by a wishbone so that it filled all the area between the masts, and was sheeted at top and bottom. The boat did well until they decided to change the rating system. Rating systems have a lot to do with fashions in rigs, even on boats not built for racing. Staysail schooners were invented to take advantage of a rule that favored schooners. Starling Burgess invented the rig, and he said if it weren't for the rating rule you'd be better off with a cutter in terms of performance.

There were a couple schooners built in the '70s for the single-handed transatlantic with multiple masts and only staysails set on them, so that they could be roller furled and made self-tacking. One was 128 feet and the other 236 feet. I was never comfortable with the ethics of sailing a 236-foot steel ship with no one on watch when the skipper was sleeping, which is I suppose why the organizers of the race started limiting length.

I've also seen a schooner that looked like a pilot boat above the water but below had an underbody like a 1950s ocean racer. It won the schooner race it was in, and the fleet included a very fast staysail schooner built in the 1930s. It had the single jib and lug-footed gaff foresail that pilot boats of the 1850s used. I can't remember the name of the boat.

It isn't hard to build a fast schooner if you set out to. I think the reason mega-yachts are going to sloops is because they now have the technology to handle these rigs with small crews. The whole point of dividing up the rig into smaller sails is to make each sail easier to handle. This enables you to operate the vessel with a smaller crew. The new sail handling technology made the mega-yacht more popular because it made the crew cost of operating these craft cheaper. For those of us who don't have the money for a mega-yacht and don't have the money for a crew, the schooner still seems like a good option. There hasn't been much innovation with the rig since the 1970s.

It's odd to see the plank on edge/skimming dish controversy rearing its head. That pretty much went away in 1891 when Nat Herreschoff introduced a fin keeler that combined the depth of the plank-on-edge boat with the shallow hull of the skimming dish, instantly making both types obsolete. The more things change...

[John B]

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid17/pa83aab0cdb01ca07343b65a2f93bbde2/fdfc2c77.jpg
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid17/p116e3e0824b98df274fa3095832a79a9/fdf6b799.jpg
A marco polo and a 390. bit of contrast there eh.
Westward is being built in europe somewhere.
Malabar 7......Ohhhhhhhhh.

[Todd Schliemann]

FORTUNE by B.B. Crowninshield 1925. She's terrifyingly fast. Nice sails too. That makes a big difference after ratings and hull development.

I've raced against here when she only had the owner + one other aboard. Points like a demon and slips along without a trace. She should have been outlawed back in '25.

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid18/p342912eaf78c44d054d5b0d35040019e/fdd1a0df.jpg

[ 04-08-2002, 11:06 PM: Message edited by: Todd Schliemann ]

[Nicholas Carey]

Originally posted by johnw:
It's odd to see the plank on edge/skimming dish controversy rearing its head. That pretty much went away in 1891 when Nat Herreschoff introduced a fin keeler that combined the depth of the plank-on-edge boat with the shallow hull of the skimming dish, instantly making both types obsolete. The more things change...La plus ça change, la même chose, indeed.

And not 20 years later, Herreshoff introduced The Universal Rule, one of the reasons for which was to get rid of fin keels as they had been found lacking in seaworthiness. In Europe, more-or-less at the same time, The International Rule was developed for much the same ends.

One of the features in these rules was the introduction of two girth measurements: chain girth and skin girth. Chain girth was the girth of th hull as measured by a chain pulled, thereby spanning the curve of the bilge. Skin girth, was the girth of the hull as measured along the skin of the hull. The difference between the two measurements was factored into into the equation. Excess difference between chain and skin girth acted as a penalty.

the point was to eliminate extreme hull forms. Unfortunately, as has been seen in recent round-the-world races, these extreme hullforms have proved unseaworthy. The fins break off. The boat is as happy upside down as it is right side up, etc.

As was noted by race commitees nigh on a century ago.

The more things change indeed.

BTW, sloop rigs have taken precedence because modern ratings rules are designed around them and give them preference. Ditto for the modern preference for small high-aspect ratio mainsails with large overlapping genoas. Only the foretriangle is measured, the genoa overlap with the main is unmeasured -- ergo it groweth large and the sail area of the main shrinketh.

Not unlike the 50s when yawl rigs were popular as the CCA rule gave mizzen area away for free.

The history of yacht design is the history of trying to exploit the ratings rule.

OTOH, sometimes an unfamiliar rig can reap [temporary] benefits. I remember the owner of Barlovento, an 80 foot schooner here on Puget sound talking about the first year he raced here under PHRF.

It seems that the measures only measure the obvious sorts of sails that boats should have in their experience in computing his handicap. When the first race came along, Barlovento made the first mark, tacked and suddenly started sprouting canvas until she nearly doubled her sailarea. The next season, of course, Barlovento's handicap was, ah, corrected.

That's the real advantage of a schooner. It's not the ease of handling provided by smaller sails, so much as it is the flexibility provided by all those pieces of canvas, along with the optional bits.

The exception here of course would be the bald-headed fore-and-aft multiple-masted schooners that commercial sailing vessels devolved into (c.f., C.A. THAYER and WAWONA) Their entire rationale was that of minimizing labor costs for the owners.

WAWONA and THAYER, 120 feet long and three masted, sailed with a crew of 5 and one donkey engine.

[johnw]

Nick,

80 feet is the moorage length for Barlovento. On deck she's about 62 ft. I've been passed by Barlovento while sailing to weather in a marconi sloop, and Barlovento was outpointing us and going about twice as fast. The staysail schooner rig was invented, I think, in 1926 or '27, and a lot of boats were converted to it because of such performances.

Alden designed a staysail schooner with a gracefull hull much like a 12 meter, and when the rule changed to penalize the staysail schooner rig, she was switched to a sloop rig and kept winning races. I'm sure Barlovento would be just as fast with the same area in a sloop rig, but she wouldn't be as much fun to watch.

Historically, I'm sure the purpose of the schooner rig was to keep crew size down. When the Hudson River sloops had to compete with steam, they switched to schooner rigs so they could operate the boats with two fewer crew. Of course, a staysail schooner has so many sheets and runners they can be a lot of work to short tack, but the rig was invented for ocean racing.

I don't think we'll get the Open 60s or the America's Cup class to adopt the girth difference measurement. One of the designers who helped put together the AC class rule stated that the girth difference measurement was intended to give the boats cruising headroom, and I thought at the time that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. We never saw 12 meters folding up or dropping their keels, let alone turning turtle like some Open 60s have done.

[SailBoatDude]

Wasn't LFH Marco Polo designed for the single man on watch to be able to handle her (hence the small and well divided rig)? She was also designed to have her balanced rudder swing 360 degrees, be very sea kindly and have life boat rollover/knockdown qualities (note the fore & aft decks) She also had huge fuel storage, for was intended to power 3,000 miles. Isn't she really a wonderfully specialized motor yacht with a three masted schooner rig?

[imported_Sean]

This just in; "Schooners are fast"

Thats what they were designed for. Getting fish back to Gloucester and Lunenburg to get the best price. Getting cargo up and down the coast in a hurry. Get them in a situation where you can ease the sheets and get up a fisherman's staysail and they will fly.

The schooner "Brilliant" is a great example of how competitive a schooner can be.

[Ian McColgin]

The Marco Polo is indeed very easy to single hand. LFH designed the rudder to go almost all the way around but it actually runs into the rudder and really would need stops.

The geometry of a wheel, like the Edson's, looks appealing but when I rebuilt the helm station I found that the leverage made the helm both too heavey and too quick. Which I could have solved by a smaller radius at the wheel end - like Edson's units with a sprocket and chain - but this is higher stress and I couldn't make it myself. I made a maple drum to take the cables about 10" D and kept the 3' tiller that the cables attach to - low stress on the cables and still turns quickly enough. No point to turning the rudder backwards anyway.

When Grana's hove-to she makes a square drift, not sternway, so the theoretical advantage of reversing the rudder is one of those ideas that LFH sometimes had that . . .

I've raved in other places about Grana's many virtues, ease of manoever, rough weather ability, speed if the wind's up and all that, and her one fault of simply refusing to move if the wind does her the dishonor of being too slight so I'll just sign off reminding all that the Marco Polo is really intended to be an example of moving the most livable bulk for the lowest sail horsepower - for global cruising. LFH showed with vessels like Ti etc what he could do if flat out speed and power were the goals.

Sail on