What is it about a Ketch Rig that Cruisers Like?

My first personal encounter with a ketch was in the late ‘70s on a two week cruise aboard the original Irish sail training vessel Asgard, built in 1905 by Colin Archer. She was a 50 foot gaff rigged ketch. She was beautiful.

Battling through a severe gale that coincided with a Fastnet race that claimed several yachts was a life-altering experience. With the wind howling around us, her skipper, Captain Eric Healy, taught me the love of a sturdy boat and that the ketch rig allows for numerous sail combinations making it easy to keep the sail plan balanced in almost all wind conditions. That experience also instilled a tremendous respect for the sea in me.

A few decades later, we started to firm up plans to go cruising. Captain Healy’s words rang in my ears. My eye also picked out every split rigged boat in any harbour we visited. With no experience sailing a ketch, other than on the Asgard, we purchased Aleria, a 57 foot cutter rigged ketch designed by Hollman and Pye, who went on to design the Oyster yachts.

The first few seasons we invited sailing experts aboard at every given opportunity. We sought and received their sage advice on the best way to sail a boat with two sticks. After all neither of us had ever owned a split rigged boat, and ‘they’ surely knew more than we did.

“Oh, the mizzen will always be drafted when you sail to windward, you will have to take it down.” “The mizzen will only make the boat round up into the wind, you will have to let it out.” And on and on it went.

Another old sage owned a beautiful classic yawl – except he had removed the mizzen, so it had become a sloop. “Nobody ever uses the mizzen,” he explained. We felt small and lost. Had we made a grievous error buying a ketch?

During that time we also frequented the boat shows. The Oyster salespeople were always particularly interested in speaking with us; we were, after all, owners of a then 30 year old 57 foot precursor to their line-up. At that time, their boats still bore the hallmarks of Hollman & Pye’s design work. We asked about an Oyster ketch: something we might dream of owning. “No, nobody wants a ketch,” was the reply. “Ketches just don’t sail well.”

Let us start with the end of the story. When coastal or offshore cruising, we come across a much higher percentage of boats with two masts, than in our local Yacht Club, where we were totally outnumbered. In fact we learned that seasoned cruisers in all the many countries we have visited gravitate towards a split rig – preferentially towards a ketch rig.

When sailing distant races or on Yacht Club cruises, we started to tweak her sails, desperate to get them to work together. Lo and behold, Aleria got faster and faster. No, we never raced her round the buoys – that just makes us dizzy. Besides, the sails are big and it is a lot of work for the two of us to bring her about.

We quickly learned that given sufficient wind, she will point almost as high as any cruiser-racer. Off the wind, she heels over a bit and passes everything in sight (except, of course the racing sleds…). When she gets in this groove, we describe it as Aleria becoming an unstoppable freight train.