Square sails - comments

[Sayla]

I'd like to ask for comment on pros & cons of square sails. Since a recent journey rolling around in the ocean, trying to butterfly main & jib, poling out etc., in sometimes fickle winds and bumpy seas I've been thinking about the benefits of a square sail - or two. I'm at the beginning of embarking on building a schooner, a 45.5' M. Petersen centreboard coaster, and I keep eyeing off the square sailed hermaphrodite brig rig of the larger schooners like Fritha, thinking it looks just so comfortable.

Here's a Coaster II (42.5')- picture from the www - 'Active', showing a yard for a square sail


And Fritha - also from the www - one of the larger (57') hermaphrodite brigantine schooners



And sailing - square sails up



I'm thinking that they work well on smaller boats too though



Sayla

[James McMullen]

I love square sails. Square rig dominated all the way through the end of commercial sailing for tradewinds sailors. The only small boat I've had a chance to sail with a squares'l was an umiak, but it was a blast!

[Hwyl]

I used to know Active, that picture is taken in English Harbour Antigua, where I've spent some time though she mostly chartered in the Virgins. I never saw her squaresail set.

I also think Fritha, beautiful as she may be is a bit tender and only puts the squares up for photo ops.

I have sailed Shenandoah with her "gant sails"

[Duncan Gibbs]

Apparently they're great on cutters and other traditional single stick, long keeled craft. For a start it keeps the CE close to where it normally is. Here's Atkin's Fore an Aft with a square yard. In this situation the sail is hoisted to the yard rather than set from it:



Sheeting is run both fore and aft (no pun intended) and the bow lines are lead back to the cockpit.

There was a great article in Classic Boat from the UK a year or two back on the subject.

[Roger Long]

In this situation the sail is hoisted to the yard rather than set from it:

That was very common on "small" (which could be considerably larger than your Coaster) craft in the age of the square rigger and is not just a modern shortcut. Often the yard and sail together were stowed on deck and only hoisted when needed. On a boat the size of the Coaster, I do not think you want to be going aloft to furl sails for offshore work. It might be fun for playing square rigger on daysails but it would be a toy. A properly rigged square sail would be great for tradewinds.

[Hwyl]

I'll throw in one of Roger's boats here



Picture not working but it's the Corwith Cramer

[Sailor]

Throw it in again, I've only got a red X!

[Woxbox]

If you really like playing with lots of strings, it's the only way to go. Sketch up your sail plan and see just how many more lines and belays it will add to your boat.

[Roger Long]

[QUOTE=Hwyl;2852283]I'll throw in one of Roger's boats here

Here you go:



Some good stories here if you haven't read them:

http://www.rogerlongboats.com/Boats.htm#Cramer

[Ian McColgin]

Square sails are really cool, romantic and all. And there are both traditional and modern ways to handle them easily. But square sails have the same problems that spinnakers have - aerodynamic self-excitation that gives the boat a big roll running downwind. That's why on square riggers tightly set staysails are so useful.

There is one downwind sail I know of, experimented with in a limited way when I had a boat with headsails, that works quite well and does not cause roll. I don't know why it's not more popular. Called the twizzler.

In essence it's twin boomed out jibs WITH ONE BIG DIFFERENCE - The poles are attached together a little abaft the jibs' stay and point somewhat forward of abeam such that the clews are well ahead of the boat. The trim can be adjusted for wind direction and let generally out to effectivly reduce the sail area. Since they meet the wind like a plough, they inherantly stabilize the boat.

On Granuaile I inherited an old two-ply "genneker" designed to lay both plys together when on the wind and to bifurcate out on each side downwind. When I heard of the "twizzler" I made some poles to make the genneker work as one. The rig was fantastic. Since that sail was a blown-out piece of junk and since in sailing about Nantucket Sound I never went downwind far enough to be worth the effort or setting up such a rig (or fooling with square sails) I didn't do much more than test the system. Were I ocean cruising in any boat, it would be in my inventory right after working and storm sails and way before any kites.

Not as romantic as square sails but pulls like a pair of mules and very easy to control.

[Duncan Gibbs]

Here's Martin O'Scannall's boat Sauntress under square:



You can see the fore braces leading up to the bowsprit and then back to the cockpit. The article in question is CB Feb' 2008 (#236 pp. 22-26). In it he discusses Claude Worth's advocacy for the square in any weather on a run.

O'Scannall talks about having two reefs in the main and the square set full in a F6 for several hours and, "The effect in these conditions is to damp rolling and ease the helm as the centre of effort is brought inboard. This gives increased speed and increased security." He also talks about light wind setups where the Lee clew is sheeted to the mast foot and the weather clew is poled out with a full main other wise he suggests just sheeting in the lee clew and easing the weather clew out if the yard is prevented from tilting too much by the shrouds.

He says that the sail and yard are both so easy to set and strike that it's rare that it's not used on any passage, "and for racing, it's a killer."

I want one!!

[Gerarddm]

When I lived in Newport back in the day Barclay Warburton had his lovely little hermaphrodite brig Black Pearl. A beautiful sight with all her laundry up, but...

If you frequent the tradewinds and you are mainly going downhill, I guess they are very apropos. Otherwise, not so much. And you surely can't single-hand one, unless it was this Tempest I saw once set up as a square rigged ship. Eeek!

[Duncan Gibbs]

I wouldn't see any reason not to single hand such a rig: Set the sheets and braces while the sail is still on deck and with O'Scannall's arrangement you'd hoist up the the two tack halyards and the single (and central) luff halyard and cleet them off and then go back to the cockpit and fine tune the sheets and braces. I'd assume that you'd lash the tiller and in the time you'd set the sail any course variation would be so small by the time you adjusted the square you'd be flying. The yard in the arrangement can stay aloft and due to the three yard halyards and the braces the stick can be relatively thin and not incur much windage.

The other advantage is added stability in a gybe.

[Sailor]

Great stuff guys.

[tprice]

Sailing on the Pride of Baltimore, I was surprised at how effective her beautifully cut topsail was in going to windward! Honestly, her jibs luffed before the topsail did!

[Rapelapente]

her jibs luffed before the topsail did!

Wind gradient effect ?
I'm wondering if, with the yard's weight sent aloft, it doesn't increase rolling more than the square sail stabilizes ?
Ian, I like the wizzler concept, but it seems the poles must be very long and rather difficult to store and handle.

[Ian McColgin]

With the twizzler, if you don't go with genny sized sails, but rather with 100% J or maybe a tudge less, then the polls are not so long - it's just normal from luff and stay out to clew plus a little to get the joint behind the jib stay. On most boats, this is shorter than deck length mast to jib stay. The biggest pain is than unless you have a bifurcating sail (like the gennaker but smaller) you'll either want twin jib stays or you'll be doing the alternate hank dandygandy.

I don't quite know why these are not more used by off-shore sailors, except that just as hard long upwind passages are to be avoided, most cruisers preferr to plan with broad reaches rather than straight runs. Also, I found with Granna and almost all my other boats, unless the straight down wind push gets you hugging hull speed, the extra distance of tacking down wind is way more than off-set by the speed gain. As everyone who ponders sailing knows, for courses where the wind is dead astern to maybe 5 degrees one side, any increase in speed caused by bearing up a little off-sets the extra miles. Even moving to 10 degrees closer than a dead run makes a mere 01.5% speed bump worth it. A real broad reach - 20 degrees - demands any speed bump 06.4% or more - a very easy goal in moderate winds for most boats, as especially for the schooners and ketches and now catboats that have been most of my life. A sail doing it's aerodynamic bit is more powerful than a sail that's just being pushed.

[Ben Fuller]

I've not sailed complex squares, only the single square on my faering and a larger one on a lestabat. Broad and beam reaching work real well on these, easier than handling a spinnaker. They are balanced, helm most civilized. And when down wind sailing is needed, down a tricky long harbor or channel for example, these become a real pleasure as jibing is a none issue.

One of the configurations that you see in marine paintings in a breeze of wind is perhaps a well reefed spanker or main in a schooner, the fore topsail up and perhaps a fore stay sail. The fore and afters keeping things balanced and stable, the fore top above the wave crests getting you drive.

[Clarkey]

I imagine that a well rigged squaresail would be very good for a 'row-out, sail back' type of boat, or maybe something like the 'gun-mount' spinnakers that used to feature on the small Freedom boats by Gary Hoyt?

[Faeringman]

I imagine that a well rigged squaresail would be very good for a 'row-out, sail back' type of boat,

One common rig for faerings is a square sail. In fact, Selway Fisher includes an alternate sail plan sheet with a square sail in his Kari 2 plans. http://www.selway-fisher.com/DoubleEs.htm#KAR

There is a beautiful picture of a 100-year-old faering sailing with a BIG square sail in Jean-Pierre Guilou's "The Faerings of Norway," an article that ran in two parts in Maritime Traditions No. 19 and 21. You can get electronic versions from the WB Store.
[IMG]wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Seilende_nordlandsbåter.JPG[/IMG]

Brandon
http://valgerda.blogspot.com

[Jay Greer]

A bifurcated square helps to reduce oscillation. And, it can be more finely tuned. Studding sails can have this effect as well.
Jay

[dredbob]

The key to a successful square sail installation on an otherwise fore and aft rigged craft is the location and support of the squaresail yard so that it does not interfere with (nor is itself interfered with by) the various shrouds and stays, and so that it can be braced around to a sufficient degree. Braces, lifts and other lines must not chafe on the existing rigging. Just how you achieve all this depends on the particulars of your rig and just how large/heavy the yard is and whether it is to be left standing aloft or will be hoisted when needed and otherwise stowed on deck.

Three different approaches that I have come across are those of L.F. Herreshoff, Claude Worth, and E.G. Martin. Herreshoff and Worth hoist the yard from the deck when needed, while Martin favored a two pieced yard much like extra long spreaders hinged on each side of the mast, which were folded down when not in use.

Herreshoff used a heavy custom cast bronze fitting that ran on a track on the forward side of the mast, while Worth's method used a jackstay suspended from a fitting hoisted up and riding on the forestay.

I'm sure that many other schemes have been used and can be devised.

The writer of the article in Classic Boat from several years ago left his rather long yard aloft all the time, but I personally would be loath to have the weight and windage up there all the time.

Dave Hadfield in this forum has described how he uses a rather small squaresail on his ketch Drake.

Herreshoff's details can be seen in drawings in _Sensible Cruising Designs_, and Worth's in his two books but in more detail in the second _Yacht Navigation and Voyaging_. Martin's scheme was described in various places when he wrote about his cutter Jolie Brise.

As Ian has indicated, nowadays the squaresail has been mostly superceded by the twin staysail arrangements of which the Twissler/Twizzler seems to be the ultimate development. It is worth noting that these twin staysail schemes were initially experimented with and developed by cruising sailors who wanted to avoid the aggravations of the squaresail yard, particularly on smaller boats. Maurice Griffiths gives a good overview of some of the development of these schemes in his book _Dream Ships_.

Your Coaster is big enough to stand up to a decent sized square sail and yard, but each element of the installation and it's handling need to be well thought out, especially getting the sail and yard down in strong winds and seas.

Being a crew member of a replica square-rigged ship, yacht square sails are something that interest me even though I'll probably never own a boat large enough to have one.

Please share any information you come across on this subject and keep the forum updated on your build.

Bob

[Sayla]

The key to a successful square sail installation on an otherwise fore and aft rigged craft is the location and support of the squaresail yard so that it does not interfere with (nor is itself interfered with by) the various shrouds and stays, and so that it can be braced around to a sufficient degree. Braces, lifts and other lines must not chafe on the existing rigging. Just how you achieve all this depends on the particulars of your rig and just how large/heavy the yard is and whether it is to be left standing aloft or will be hoisted when needed and otherwise stowed on deck.

It's the chaffing on the shrouds that makes me wonder about the the typical position of yards that I've seen in photos. It would seem that just below the top of shrouds as shown in these photos is a favoured position, and that some attachments of yards are in a way 'floating' for some compensation of this, but I wonder do they chaff and exert pressure on shrouds or stays?

[John Little]

Some years ago I did a lot of tradewind sailing. At first we used a poled out jib with the main on the opposite side. That worked pretty well. Then I bought a second jib and another pole and fitted a second forestay. Running downwind the boat rolled considerably more. In the end I abandoned the twin jibs and reverted to the original setup. I've never used a square sail but I imagine that it would have similar problems. Also, that yard would create a lot of windage when you are going to windward.

[JimConlin]

Ian, I think it was called a 'twistle' rig. A similar notion was touted by Wright Britton around 1970. He had twin jibs on the same luff wire and rolled 'em up with the jib furler of the day. He called 'en 'Genny-wings'. Magic came to us with such a rig and I couldn't get it to work well. The furlers of the day did not replace the forestay and we had the problem that the forestay kept getting rolled up in the sail. After a season, I ditched the whole business. Furker and all. They were no good for jibs either.

I haven't given up on the notion of a stable, symmetrical downwind rig, though.
This is Damfino in downwind configuration.

It seems to work, but the boat is fast enough that tacking downwind is probably faster in this case.

[John Little]

I think the reason these twin foresail rigs were developed in the first place was as an aid to self steering on long passages. The sheets were taken back to the tiller. With the advent of reliable wind vanes this setup is no longer necessary.

[dredbob]

Sayla,

I am far from an authority on this, as my experience is with a single vessel, a replica of a small 17th century ship. On this vessel, the yards are slung much as you indicate, right up under the tops or crosstrees where the lower shrouds come to the mast. The yard does indeed bear on the lee shrouds when braced hard over. The shrouds are heavily parcelled and served for their protection, and the yard has battens on its aft side for several feet either side of center to protect it. All this rigging is fiber rope of relatively large diameter. There is a bit of rigging called a catharping between the port and starboard sets of shrouds that is essentially a lashing that transfers some of the tension from the weather shrouds over to the lee side. This helps to pull them (the lee shrouds) in a bit so that they are that much more out of the way of the yard. Brace tension helps to keep the yard hard against the lee shrouds to minimize movement, which is the source of chafe.

Now this is how it is on a square rigged ship, and I assume that on some very large traditional topsail schooners and the like that there may be a similar situation.

But in my reading (and I have looked hard for anything on the subject) about the use of a square sail on an otherwise fore and aft rigged yacht, it seems that they are all trying very hard to minimize contact of the yard with the shrouds, usually by somehow suspending the yard a bit forward of the mast, and by having it up just above where the lower shrouds come to the mast (and all of these were gaff rigged).

But these fellows were mostly interested in the square sail as a trade wind running rig, and didn't really need to be able to brace it around too much, although the ability to do so adds to the versatility of the rig.

Are there any details for a square yard shown on the Coaster plans?

Bob

[Woxbox]

Chafing is always an issue. The Kalmar Nyckel has heavy mats on the yards to protect them, but the mats often shift and the wood quickly gets chewed up on the shrouds. (The shrouds hold up better.) No matter how you set it up, it will take some experience and experiments to get it all working smoothly. You've got to think about controlling the yard in a seaway, too, lest it repeatedly swing back and bang against the mast.

[Sayla]

it seems that they are all trying very hard to minimize contact of the yard with the shrouds, usually by somehow suspending the yard a bit forward of the mast, and by having it up just above where the lower shrouds come to the mast (and all of these were gaff rigged). But these fellows were mostly interested in the square sail as a trade wind running rig, and didn't really need to be able to brace it around too much, although the ability to do so adds to the versatility of the rig. Are there any details for a square yard shown on the Coaster plans?

No - my design is for fore & aft - the square sail is something I've thought up - from experience, and from looking at various other craft. Bracing ability would be useful for such a sail, but do shrouds need to enter the fray for that.......?

[dredbob]

No - my design is for fore & aft - the square sail is something I've thought up - from experience, and from looking at various other craft. Bracing ability would be useful for such a sail, but do shrouds need to enter the fray for that.......?

I feel like I am at the end of where I can offer any advice without it being speculation. Maybe Roger can jump back in with some insight on real world rigging details that would be suitable for a yacht like the Coaster.

Bob

[jantje]

Well,

I don't want to interrupt the discussion about which sails ( or sail-combinations )are better on which winds at which size of boat or ship....there have been giant wooden schooners with something up to 6 to 7 masts as well as 4 - 5 masted Square-fullriggers ( only one of the 5-masted fulls..the "Preussen" ) in the "olden days". All did fine at their special job and many failed as well ( again the "Preussen" )....

A side-question which came to my mind longtime ago though was : A square-rigged Mast has the sailcloth in many ""small"" portions...so to say, from Main up to Top or Skysail, while the Gaff/ Schooner-rigg has it's Sailcloth in two generally ( main and top).

So I WOULD suppose, that the squaresail is much tougher...beeing smaller in Square Metres each.
BUT BUT BUT....I have seen much more Pictures, Photos,paintings showing a ship with its square-sails in shreds than Schooners....come to think of it, I've never seen much Schoonersails blown into Shreds.

Doesn't make sense ..does it ? Or did I read the wrong books ?

Maybe somebody here has an idea about that.... ?

jantje

[H/V Vega]

Have a look at our rig on Vega. It is an old and very well proven one. The only difference being the originals had a running yard they could hoist up or lower to control the roll better. Ours is fixed. We set our 110 meter main running sail from the deck only the raffees need someone aloft to set and furl them.If it works for you be glad to send you better details. Here is the link to our image bank. People always think that is the hardest sail to use but we find it is the easiest one on the boat.

[dhic001]

I also think Fritha, beautiful as she may be is a bit tender and only puts the squares up for photo ops.

Gareth,
That idea is totally daft, certainly in relation to her use when New Zealand based. To get the best out of her (and any other Brigantine for that matter), the squares have to be used. In tradewind situations the squares are almost exclusively used. We were discussing Fritha and the trip to Japan and back to New Zealand last week, and the statement made by the skipper was that the main was lashed down on deck and most of the sailing was done under topsail and course.
Daniel

[davidmilne]

give me a call. we have a square and raffees on our vixen atkin design
514 484 5543 works great but some choices to be made.

I'd like to ask for comment on pros & cons of square sails. Since a recent journey rolling around in the ocean, trying to butterfly main & jib, poling out etc., in sometimes fickle winds and bumpy seas I've been thinking about the benefits of a square sail - or two. I'm at the beginning of embarking on building a schooner, a 45.5' M. Petersen centreboard coaster, and I keep eyeing off the square sailed hermaphrodite brig rig of the larger schooners like Fritha, thinking it looks just so comfortable.

Here's a Coaster II (42.5')- picture from the www - 'Active', showing a yard for a square sail


And Fritha - also from the www - one of the larger (57') hermaphrodite brigantine schooners



And sailing - square sails up



I'm thinking that they work well on smaller boats too though



Sayla

[Thad]

Sailing in the Boston Parade of Sail in Opsail 2000, SEA HARMONY had PRIDE OF BALTIMORE II just astern, all the way in she had her square topsail backed and I was sure it was a brake to keep from blasting past us, BRENDARIS in front of us and on up the line. Very useful sail.