Sloops all over ?

[ricardo de oliveira]

:confused: Let's make a world tour: Amsterdam, Sydney,Rio de Janeiro, etc. Why, in this world so diverse, with different weather and seas, 90% of the boats are rigged as marconi sloops? Form follows function?

[Bruce Hooke]

Whole books could be written on this subject and many articles have been written on it, but here are my quick thoughts.

There are, I think, a variety of reasons why the Marconi sloop is so dominant. Some of the reasons make more sense than others:

The Marconi sloop rig is heavily favored by the standard racing rating rules so pretty much anyone who wants to race goes with that rig. Since a lot of cruising boats are purchased by people who at least occasionally like to race it has become the standard. Also, lots of people like to have what is fashionable and fashion often follows what the racers do.

It is, at this point, by far the most familiar rig to most sailors so someone trying to sell a boat of any other rig has an uphill battle. Most people like to buy what they are familiar with.

It is a fairly efficient rig especially upwind and since most coastal sailors have to sail upwind a fair amount of the time the upwind efficiency tends to get prioritized.

Very few people have any experience with fast sailboats of other rigs. Say "gaff rig" and most people immediately think "pretty but slow". This is rather unfair to the gaff rig since a well-designed gaff rig on a good hull can be quite speedy.

It allows for a reasonably compact rig that, if you don't mind spending money on suite of sails, can be fairly versatile, with big genoas and spinnakers for light airs, and a small working jib and reefed main for heavier weather.

If you are not trying to race it is a fairly simple rig to sail with a small crew. There are no running backstays to worry about, just two sails, two halyards and two sheets.

The higher stresses inherent in the Marconi rig work well with modern materials that can readily handle these stresses. If we were still using cotton sails and rope standing rigging the Marconi rig would not work at all well.

As to why sloops, as opposed to rigs with more than one mast -- relatively few boats are large enough to effectively handle more than one mast. In the 40 foot and up size range I'd say that yawls and ketches are fairly popular.

In some ways it's like wooden boats. The number of thoughtful people out there who are willing to really look at the details and decide what hull material, or what rig, is just right for the kind of sailing they do is pretty small. Most boat owners simply get what everyone else has -- a fiberglass Marconi rigged sloop. The Marconi sloop is good in many ways but it probably isn’t quite as much better than some other rigs as one would think based on it’s dominance in the current sailing world.

[Thad]

Thanks Bruce, good reply.

[Bayboat]

Yep, a nice reply, Bruce. I'm not sure at all about the "form follows function" idea. I think very much is attributable, as you suggest, to "monkey see, monkey do." This results in a lot of folk buying hermaphrodite boats that are neither good racers nor good cruisers. If (when?) I go world cruising it would probably be in a gaff-rigged ketch or, if over 50' LOA, a gaff schooner or schooner-yacht rig. Wooden, of course.

[ricardo de oliveira]

Thanks for the reply, Bruce.
Bayboat, hermaphrodite boats are a perfect conception.
With "form follows function" I was thinking (wrong) about technology naturally developing under particular and local conditions. But it seems that fashion prevails and nothing evolves so naturally in this days.
And , please, guys, forgive my poor French.

[Dave Fleming]

French??? Hell I thought is was Brazilian Portugese! :D

[ricardo de oliveira]

Dave,
How do you know we speak Portuguese? It's a secret, ok?. Everybody else thinks we speak Spanish...

[holzbt]

Sloops are for people who have never sailed a catboat or a schooner. I think Bruce is right on the mark. There are an incredible number of really interesting rigs and types of boats out there.

[ 05-02-2002, 06:28 PM: Message edited by: holzbt ]