MAYAN’s History — The Missing Bits….
All boats have bits of their history that are lost forever, most of it doesn’t matter to anyone. But MAYAN has been such a well loved boat that it is odd that no one can determine when her rig changed. She was built as a “transitional schooner rig”, this can been seen in this early picture of her reaching in light winds. (below)
MAYAN’s original rig had a jib-headed or leg-o-mutton mainsail. We now call those “Marconi mainsails” and almost every boat has one. This type of mainsail was introduced to reduce the size of the crew and the weight carried aloft. Marconi mainsails had also proven to be much faster on racing sloops of the ’20s and ’30s. In the ’30s the transitional schooner carried the gaff-headed foresail of the past and the jib-headed mainsail of the future.
[For those of you who aren’t traditional rig sailors, the “gaff” is the wooden pole that runs diagonally across the top of the foresail, the sail between the two masts that is hoisted from the foremast.]
Why didn’t schooner designers, like John Alden, change both masts to the more modern jib-headed sail design? There are at least two parts to the answer. First, a sailor’s life depends upon the reliability of his vessel. Before making any large design change sailors like to see a great deal of testing. We are a conservative lot because our lives have depended on it. Second, it was easy to get high-performance from the gaff headed foresail, much easier than it was from a gaff-headed main.
Why does the gaff work on the foresail of a schooner but not on the mainsail? A key problem with any sail is controlling the twist. When a sailor pulls the mainsheet the initial movement of the boom is towards the center line of the boat. Then, once the boom gets close to the center, further pulling shifts to bringing the boom down and tightening the after edge of the sail, the leach. As can be seen in the picture below, with the boom pulled into nearly the centerline of the boat there is still a great deal of twist in the sail.
This means that the sails is trimmed in too much at the bottom and not enough at the top. Only the middle of the sail is working optimally by being set at the correct angle to the wind. With a jib-headed mainsail this problem is more easily addressed because the mainsail doesn’t project its area so far aft, reducing the leverage of the sail, and because the materials used are much stronger.
Unlike the cutter pictured on the left, the twist of a schooner’s foresail can easily be controlled. An adjustable “gaff vang” attaches the front edge of the mainmast to the aftermost tip of the gaff. If there is too much twist, the gaff vang is hauled in and the twist is reduced. If there isn’t enough twist, the gaff vang is eased. This allows the twist in the bottom of the foresail to be adjusted by using the foresail sheet and in the top of the foresail by using the gaff vang. The sailor can put as much or as little twist as he desires into the sail easily.
Sometime, between about 1950 and 1969 MAYAN was converted to a staysail schooner. Why was she changed? Staysail schooners replace the gaff-headed foresail with a main staysail and main topmast staysail set above it.
While technically all of these are main topmast staysails, there are various romantic names which are much more popular. There is a real ring to shouting: “Hoist the Fisherman!” or “Standby for the Gollywobbler!” These staysails, from the smallest to the largest, are named the: Little Fisherman (shown in the picture on the left), Fisherman (shown at the beginning of this post), Advance and Gollywobbler. Clearly, this is much more fun that main topmast staysail numbers 1 through 4.
This rig conversion was a very common conversion for two reasons. First, a desire for fewer crew. Without a gaff on the foresail one person can hoist, reef and strike the main staysail easily. Second, the staysail schooner rig had started winning races. Starling Burgess and John Alden were competitors as yacht designers and their competition played out in races like the Bermuda Race and the Trans-Atlantic races of the era. Burgess had shaken the sailing world with a small staysail schooner named NIÑA, which finished first in the Trans-Atlantic Race to Spain by sailing closer to the wind than her much larger gaff-headed competitors. He had also dominated local races with an innovative 88' schooner named the ADVANCE.
The large upwind main topmast staysail called the “advance” is named in her honor. Below you can see an advance staysail working well with a genoa and mainsail on the beautiful S&S schooner SANTANA. This innovation kept staysail schooners competitive with sloops and cutters for a few more years.
Owners immediately started to demand staysail schooner rigs from Alden, who reportedly resisted them. Alden was one of the few schooner owners who was also a first class racer. He knew that the added sail area of a gaff foresail rig was helpful on a reach and that most ocean races were reaches. Eventually the pressure of competition and owner’s demands for less crew forced him to move to the staysail schooner rig and eventually to yawls and ketches.
Alden’s final personal class win in the Bermuda race was achieved in a transitional schooner, with her gaff headed foresail drawing perfectly as she crossed the finish line. This was over a decade after everyone else had given up on the transitional rig. Olin Stephens mused that Alden would have probably won the entire race, rather than just his class, if he’d been willing to race one of the fast Alden Yawls.
With this background, it’s not at all surprising that MAYAN was re-rigged as a staysail schooner. Indeed, it’s surprising she wasn’t built with that rig in 1947. But sailors are a conservative lot, remember their lives depend upon it, and they adopt innovations only when well proven. Now MAYAN finds herself as a grand old girl sporting a rig long since designated obsolete by racing sailors. But we can easily sail her without help and her small sails make it easy to set, reef and strike. Perhaps more importantly, there are lots of lines and sails for guests and grandchildren to call their own; and she sports one of the most beautiful rigs ever designed for a sailing boat.
One final bit of fun, in the picture below the Alden 83' staysail schooner SERENA is sporting her rig for the TransPac race to Hawaii. From bow to stern she is flying a fore spinnaker, fore spinnaker staysail, gollywobbler (the gigantic sail with two stripes), and mainsail. There is no rig that can hold up more sail area on a reach, or look better doing it.
