PabloPicasso
Well-Known Member
3 masted Luggers were banned in Britain as smugglers used them to outrun the customs cutters. But I don't understand how this could be so. Can anyone explain?
3 masted lugger
- Thread starter PabloPicasso
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dur
Well-Known Member
I expect the customs guys took one look at them, realised they didn't have a chance and went to the pub.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0jkZ8U4pd0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0jkZ8U4pd0
FWB
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prv
Well-Known Member
That's a lot of lines for a lugger!
Does she dip? I'm guessing not from the yards on opposite sides of the masts, but perhaps that's just temporary for a bit of short-tacking?
Pete
FWB
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No I guess not.
I was talking to her owner and builder (he built her in one year!) at the Fowey Classics a few weeks ago. He said that she is very easy to sail.
prv
Well-Known Member
Hold on - just noticed she has a kind of peak halyard on each yard. This is a very different rig to the Cornish luggers I've seen - they use the weight of the yard to pull up on the luff, keeping it really tight and aerodynamic in a way that wasn't possible with other rigs in the days of hemp cordage (one of several reasons for their good performance). That's not gonna work if you hang the outboard end of the yard from a string.
Pete
Pete
FWB
N/A
I imagine that the yard would fall away to leeward if the peak halyard wasn't there. The luffs look tight and she was barrelling along when she went past me up the Fal.
PabloPicasso
Well-Known Member
Thread dift+++
So how come luggers with simple, probably poorly maintained rigs, cold outpace the cutters?
So how come luggers with simple, probably poorly maintained rigs, cold outpace the cutters?
dur
Well-Known Member
Guessing: Power to weight ratio with a good bit of hull form and weatherliness of the rig thrown in?
prv
Well-Known Member
(Bear in mind that at that time in history, "cutter" referred to the style of hull and its purpose, not the rig per se)
If the Customs vessel was a square-rigger, then almost anything fore-and-aft (which a lugger is) would romp away from it upwind.
Against a gaff-rigged vessel of the period, a Cornish lugger was very clean and aerodynamic. A tight luff, from the seesaw action of the yard, slicing into the wind with nothing ahead of it to disturb the breeze. A cleanly-flowing sail, not distorted around any rigging (I'm assuming a traditional dipping lug, which is always set on the leeward side). Very little gear dragging in the wind - a smallish lugger has the mast, and the halyard secured on the windward side as a kind of temporary shroud, and that's about it (bigger ones might have another shroud, but nothing like the web of hemp on any other type of vessel). The owner of Guide Me also describes an interesting effect due to using the halyard as a shroud - as a gust hits, the mast leans to leeward, the tension in the halyard increases, and the sail is automatically flattened. As the gust recedes, the reverse happens, and thus the sail is constantly adjusting itself to the wind. In contrast, the headsails on the customs cutter would get fuller as a gust hit - this is before the days of polyester rope and wire shrouds, so everything was stretching and shifting all the time.
They also simply carried a lot of sail area - which I assume is what the authorities were trying to reduce by banning the mainmast.
Pete
