yawls, again !

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skipperscouse

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purely out of curiosity.
is there a hard and fast rule as to what a yawl is as opposed to a ketch ?
based on the premise that mast should be aft of the rudder stock , does that mean that any yacht with a transome hung rudder connot be a yawl ?
hope that makes sense !
pete
 
I always understood that a yawl has the mizzen mast aft of the rudder post whereas a ketch has it ahead of it. Therefore a yacht with a transom mounted rudder cannot be a yawl, [unless the mizzen is mounted on some kind of outrigger or bumkin].

Have a nice day, yawl.
 
Falmouth Quay Punts?

A Falmouth Quay Punt is transom sterned, by definition, and is a yawl, by definition!

The mizzen on some that I have seen being offset to one, side to clear the tiller.
 
And Ketches?

Just been reading Edgar March's "Sailing Trawlers" (thanks, Little Knot!).

A trawlerman quoted therein is quite emphatic on the difference between a ketch and a dandy.

A ketch is a trading vessel, with a fixed bowsprit and a jib boom secured to it, carrying more than two headsails.

A dandy is a cutter (with, by definition, see Hervey Benham, who quotes HM Customs on this point, a running bowsprit) and a mizzen mast stepped ahead of the tiller.

Most big English fishing cutters were converted to dandies in the 1870's and 1880's when the mainboom got much over 40ft long and became too hard to manage.

Corruption of the word "dandy" gives us the French word "Dundee" for a sailing trawler.

So, I reckon most yacht ketches are actually dandies.
 
As far as I have been able to tell, there is very little of the terminology of the sea which is 'hard and fast'. Certainly the term 'Yawl' or 'Yole' is used to cover all sorts of craft, including the rowed fishing boats of the Shetlands. The definition based on the position of the rudder post with respect to the mizzen mast is just one; I am sure that there is a similar one based upon the relative sail areas of the main and mizzen, but I suspect that the criteria vary from port to port.
Peter.
 
Thames barges?

A ketch barge was always identified as such, hence the others must all be yawls. Including those (none now extant?) with the mizzen mounted on the rudder head and sheeted to the rudder blade!
 
Whereas the "mizzen mast aft of the rudderpost" definition seems to be the generally accepted one, some early definitions state only that the mizzen is stepped as far aft as possible - this in distinguishing a yawl from a schooner. I have also seen definitions that rely on the use of the mizzen sail rather than the location of the mast; a yawl uses the mizzen for steering and stability wheas the ketch uses it's mizzen to provide drive.
So, a transom mounted rudder on a yawl is possible by some definitions.
 
Hello Y'awl!

Thanks very much for all your replies............Phew! glad we got that one sorted! Never was much of a one for pendantisism. If I decides to go ahead and stick a mast on me little boats arris, it will be called a Yawl.

Cheers, Charlie.
 
Also, the definition of a yawl, can be a ketch, (ie stepped before the rudder) but with a mizzen sail X times smaller than the main, especially in gaff rigged vessels.

I will try and find out what the value of X is and post it here. But this is a fact.
 
Re: yawls, again !(re Peterduck)

Shetland yoles are usually rowed nowadays, very competitively. Here in Orkney yoles can be one or two masted and sprit or lug rigged. The south isles yoles when two masted carry a jib and two sprits all well forward of the rudder and to further complicate terminology the foresail is bigger than the main (like some luggers). The defining point is the hull shape.
In the US the big schooners carry a tender called a yawl boat which is often a launch with a brutally big engine used for manoeuvring the mother ship in harbour.
Acrosss the North Sea we find jols and jolles amongst other names and I suspect this is where we get our jolly boat from. The root word would seem to come from one of the early germanic or norse languages and to have migrated and evolved over the millenia.
Vive la difference.
 
My Salcombe Yawl has a transom hung rudder, so is probably more correctly a ketch, although i think having a boom that overhangs the transom is unofficially considered to make it a yawl - mind you, Salcombe estuary is actually a "Ria" and not an estuary at all, so it's hard to know what to believe!
 
Francis Herreshoff was quite strong in one of his books that Yawl was "a ship's boat resembling the pinnace" and it was set up to be primarily rowed. So maybe that fits in with the Yoals from England - which also were primarily rowed.

So a yawl was a rowing boat of a particular size. Maybe with a particular number of oars.

Now if you want to add a sailing rig to a rowboat you clearly want the masts to be well out of the way of the oarspersons. Main well forward and mizzen, well, as far aft as you can make it to keep the sail area balanced around the hull's centre of lateral resistance.

So a yawl, according to Herreshoff had nothing to do with rudder placement relative to the mizzen at all. And a yawl rig - is simply the rig of a yawlboat.

Ketch of course was a "catch" or fishing boat. The mizzen needs to be bigger as you want to hold the nose of the boat to the sea so you can handle the nets without copping boarding seas. The main would have been dropped and the mizzen trimmed tight and flat midships to hold the nose up into the wind to some extent.

So to get enough area to do that the mizzen mast has to move forward toward the centre of lateral resistance which allows its sail to be bigger without upsetting the balance of the boat.

I suspect that the real confusion came in with rating rules - and would be interested to know for sure whether it is true.

I know the CCA (Cruising Club of America) rating rule that was later combined with the RORC rule to become the IOR rule in the 50s used the rudder post definitions of ketch and yawl as others have pointed out above and gave a different percentage value to the sail area for each. The ketch having more of its area being counted toward the total sail area whereas the yawl having the sail further aft had to be quite small and couldn't generate much power so not much of its area was added to the total sail area for calculation of the yacht's handicap.

The rudderpost argument is purely a relatively recent sailing handicap nicety rather than something that goes back to real tradition and real use.

A further argument for this view could be made by looking at the Humber Yawl Club and its fleet of Canoe Yawls. it was active coming up to 1900 and a bit past. Albert Strange was a member.

The boats were canoe sterned and somewhat bigger and more burdensome than canoes - thus the name "canoe yawl" - and note that it may be a size reference too - BIGGER than a canoe.

Many of the boats had stern hung rudders because they were expected to land on beaches for camping purposes. I suspect that crowd were much more aware of tradition than the racing people half a century later.

Ketch and Yawl probably have nothing to do with Rudder position.

Best Regards
Michael Storer
my boat pages
 
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