Nugland

These are meant more as notes for me and whatever crew goes with on the Centennial, but some of it may apply to anyone with a gaffer, anyone with leeboards and anyone considering or curious about those types of boats. Hell, some of it might be of general interest, I dunno. Anyway, this is a work in progress.

Using the gaff sails

Raising the gaff sails goes best the way all the books tell you to do it: keep the gaff level (don’t raise the peak higher than the throat) until the throat is as high as it will go. If you raise the peak higher early, it makes the throat halliard harder to pull.

Be careful about where the topping lift is in relation to the gaff as you raise the gaff. It seems pretty easy to get the gaff on the wrong side of the topping lift, which is annoying (you have to lower the gaff and get it on the correct side, then lift it again; what a drag).

Once he gaff is up and you’re sailing for a while, you may be able to pull the halliards a little tighter. Don’t know the details, that’s just what I experienced.

The halliards are really long, especially the main’s ones (they have a two-to-one mechanical advantage, so you pull twice the length of halliard — twice). You really have to be tidy with them, and promptly, or they’ll go everywhere (probably overboard or and wrapped around your legs). You are not done raising a sail until they are coiled up and tucked between the taught part of the halliard and the mast (or otherwise secured).

I’m looking forward to having one halliard that tightens the luff and one that tightens the leech, what with all the tuning opportunities that offers, but I haven’t had a chance to play with that idea yet.

Another thing I’ll get to play with is using the mizzen staysail halliard as a gaff vang for the main. That’ll directly control the twist of the top of the sail. First, though, I should rig tell-tales along the leech (so I can tell what tuning is needed).

Reefing

I did screw around with a reef once, but we’ll need to really investigate reefing before we rely on it. No rush, really, as the main can come down whenever I feel over-canvassed; ‘jib-and-jigger’ (staysail and mizzen) is everything they say it is. At least on Centennial it is, what as the mizzen is larger (as a percentage of the main’s size) than most ketches carry nowadays. (All is listed out here and pictured here.)

Ted Brewer drew reefs on the staysail, but the current one doesn’t have them. I’m not so worried about that, as anything that would require a reef there would be better dealt with by just dropping it completely. Then I could throw a reef or two on the mizzen and run, essentially, hove-to. (I wouldn’t want to be out there on the bouncing bowsprit tying reef knots in a blow, no sir.)

The helm

No mystery here, or, perhaps, I should say all mystery here; the hydraulic steering has zero feel (meaning: you can’t tell how much pressure there is on the rudder from how the wheel ‘fights’ you, because it never ‘fights’ you, it just goes where you point it. Most sailers hate this; they call it a ‘dead helm’. Me? I’m OK with it). We did mark a spoke for ‘on center’, and set the sensitivity so that one revolution is about all the helm we would want in either direction, so I’m expecting to eventually get a better sense of what the helm is up to.

The rudder is huge, so it will be a good idea to get a feel for where it is pointing on the various tacks. Sailing ’straight’ but with a lot of rudder turns the rudder into a partial speed-brake (which is bad). Better would be to have just a little lee helm (5º or so) and slacken either the staysail or the mizzen to keep things on course. We’ll work something out.

The leeboards

The main thing we observed in our brief trial was a tendency for the leeboards to not extend all the way down to vertical when you come about and switch to the new lee. When not completely lowered, they will never be as efficient and will move the CP (center of pressure) aft (which adds lee helm, which is bad). We will need to work on this.

Update: Looking at some pictures again, I remembered that the Loys fitted a small block of rubber to the leeboard rail (to stop, if memory serves, some leeboard vibration when underway). These may be the culprit.

It would also be much nicer if the leeboards angled outboard, what as that would leave them closer to vertical (when viewed from ahead or astern) — and, therefore, more effective — when heeled. They actually angle inboard; sigh. There might be some way to wedge something between the leeboard and the guide-rail, but nothing elegant come to mind. If I ever have to replace the guide-rails, I might increase their span a little. Or maybe rig the staples again, but with the leeboards outboard of them.

Tacking (coming about)

Just as Nick Loy said it would, the Centennial doesn’t really enjoy turning across the wind. There are several factors that contribute to this; among them: 1, Gaff-rigged ketches don’t really point up that well in the first place, so there are more points on the compass to get through on a tack; 2, At 8,250 pounds, Centennial doesn’t have as much momentum as you’d expect a 34-foot boat to have (a typical 34-foot cruiser weighs 12,000 to 12,500 pounds); 3, Centennial has a lot of windage (the headwind has a lot of stuff to catch on as the bow passes through it), which hampers the already-reduced momentum.

There are some strategies to deal with the Centennial’s tendency to get stuck facing the wind (’in irons’) when she tries to go around. I could reduce the amount of rudder I use (which would lessen the amount of ‘braking’ the rudder causes), among other strategies, but then the turn would take longer, which would give the already low momentum more time to peter out. The one trick that works every time (and that Nick told me he used) is to back the mizzen (by reaching overhead and shoving the boom to windward). That seems to spin her enough to get on the new tack. The downside? The backed mizzen slows her down even more, and the whole exercise betrays the work-boat origins of the Centennial. Ah, vanity.

Long-term, I plan on taking advantage of the GPS to plot nice, long tacks when I’m on a beat. That’ll cut down on how many times we have to tack.