Cruising Sailors Forum Archive

It's a staysail ketch. I sailed on one

in a previous life -- joined her in Grenada and crossed the Atlantic in the fo'c's'le, worked aboard for the summer in the Med.
She was 75 feet LOA built by Camper & Nicholsons in the 1950s or 60s. Rakassa was her name, built originally for some Arab.
I never did get the mainsail . . .
Under jib, staysails, and mizzen she did pretty well in a decent breeze but the mainsail terrified me -- I didn't like the idea of it being sheeted to the top of the mizzen mast. We didn't set it very often. (We actually motored most of the way across the Atlantic -- the skipper loaded her with fuel in drums and took the millpond route through the Azores High.
She didn't have wishbones on the staysails. They might have helped when reaching, I guess, sort of the precursor to the Hoyt boom?
You usually see these staysail ketches with a wishbone on the mainsail -- the classiest one out there must be Camelot.

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