Thumbs up for ketches

When some people think of ketches they think slow. They have a certain perception in their mind of how a ketch is. A friend is a skipper on a 75ft custom ketch built in 2003. Its a high speed flying machine. 2.5m draft until the centre board is deployed then she turns in to a high performance windward machine. Its a stunning boat.
Amel spent years only building ketches. They have a huge folllowing and there are a lot of them cruising the Caribbean. They make sense for short handed crews. The devoted sloop sailors on this forum probavly have never sailed a good ketch but they still have their opinion. They are entitled to their opinion of course, but its only an opinion based on prejudice not fact. Of course there are bad ketches about but there are also terrible monohulls about.
 
LadyInBed said:
It takes 20 knots to get mine moving!
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But then she does move rather nicely. I remember someone once scanning the horizon and commenting:

"Ahh, there's Lady in Bed about 4 milles off our starboard bow"

"How can you possibly know at that distance?" asked the missus

"That unmistakable mizzen gennaker!" came the answer! ;)
 
geem said:
..... Of course there are bad ketches about but there are also terrible monohulls about.
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That's very true.
There are also some reasonably good ketches and sloops and cutters about, sailed badly or motored because people can't get them to go well.
It seems to me that getting the best out of a ketch upwind is actually about 4 times the effort of a sloop for one extra sail?
Plus sailmakers seem to produce a lot of mizzen sails which really come into their own as a steadying sail rather than motive power.
Personally, I just don't like the look of bermudan ketch rig. But then I think the aesthetics of the Contessa 32 are grossly over-rated too.
 
geem said:
The devoted sloop sailors on this forum probavly have never sailed a good ketch but they still have their opinion. They are entitled to their opinion of course, but its only an opinion based on prejudice not fact....
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Oh dear; here comes the personalising.

Alas, it won't support a duff argument; it makes it worse.
 
Nobody's mentioned Freedom Cat wishbone ketches, someone on here has one. I was lucky enough to help bring her back from the Azores. Carbon masts and bones, no disadvantages in particular except high stresses on the halyards, and also on the mast steps and feet.
The sails are very similar sizes (or identical? not quite sure) and it went very well, a simple and elegant design, with little windage aloft.
 
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I've been thinking about mounting my Rutland 913 on a bracket on the mizzen (rather than selling it) as there seems nowhere to mount it on deck without getting in the way. BUT....wont it get in the way of flying the mizzen staysail....or am I missing something here?...

We had an Ampair on the mizzen mast and you cannot fly a mizzen staysail.
 
West Country fishing boats would have a gaff rigged mizzen, big as possible and set ‘tight as a shirt’. This would snap you up head to wind as soon as you knocked out of gear, then with the helm set over a squirt on the engine sets you crabwise along the gear. Only problem would be hauling gear with tide and wind together but even so you could sometimes work along the gear backwards.
Good mizzen worth an extra hand.
 
alant said:
So he claimed.
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In one of his books ( The Lonely Sea and the Sky?) he recounts taking delivery, first trial sail in the Solent, followed by extensive improvised modifications, including adding more sections of keel, adding ballast, all sorts. Although I read it many yrs ago, I certainly came away with the impression it was ill designed. And it's behaviour at sea sounded bad as well.
But I am open to heretical talk that Chichester was not very good at sailing, and couldn't get her trimmed due to rank incompetence..
I wonder if the designer wrote an autobiography as well?

(I was taken to see him get knighted, at Greenwich Pier but being very little at the time, don't remember it)
 
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I like the look of these freedom ketches but the absence of shrouds can be a problem. I once rafted up on one and climbing over her guardrails without accidentally kicking them or hanging onto them wasn't easy with no shrouds to hang onto! :D
 
dom said:
Oh dear; here comes the personalising.

Alas, it won't support a duff argument; it makes it worse.
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If ketches are so bad, why do Perini Navi turn out superyacht ketches. The 6th largest private yacht at 70m was launched last year. It looks stunning. Once you get to larger sizes the ketches look stunning.
 
geem said:
If ketches are so bad, why do Perini Navi turn out superyacht ketches. The 6th largest private yacht at 70m was launched last year. It looks stunning. Once you get to larger sizes the ketches look stunning.
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In the old days, I suspect people would have tutted that 2 masts were not enough for a 70m boat?
What's right for 70metres is weak justification for 35 feet.
 
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