Plans and information on the Goose sailboat here
Goose Sailing
It is short, but it is concise. The Goose sails well – read on.
Jim Post has been sailing his Goose a few times but has been dogged by light winds. So all we have really seen are videos of motoring. It was nice to see it motoring and how it looked on the water, but we needed more!
Finally last weekend he got what he has been praying for.
This is Jim’s Report.
Over the last weekend, excellent sailing conditions arrived, with winds estimated at about 10-15 knots, some better gusts.
Good video is on the way to you and Chuck. Am really looking forward to comments and observations.
I am amazed at the power displayed by the lug rig and how well balanced the Goose design is. But when I see all the history of these lug variations I know that men used them to make a living on the ocean and bays and had to have an easily worked yet powerful sail plan.
Who would have thought it would be developed for pleassure craft as you have done.
Warm regards,
Jim Post
For the designer, the most important aspect is to get the balance of the helm right. I do try hard to make sure my boats have a very nice balanced helm, so that is great. I don’t have any doubts at all about the general performance as the PDR and OzRacers have shown themselves to be very capable boats.
FREE ketch/yawl sailplan
The other thing that happened this week is Rick Landreville in Canada is building a Goose. He wanted to try a ketch/yawl rig. So I modified the RAID41 rig and found to my delight that I didn’t need to move the centreboard/leeboard position. It’s like it was fated!
The drawings include the sail design so you can make the sails yourself out of polytarp – a day’s simple work – and saves you about $600 over buying sails for a small performance decrease – the sail designs have been tested and are quite good. *If you have purchased a Goose plan I will give you the drawings for free.
Ketch and Yawl and Controversy
I am suitably vague when using these names – ketch and yawl – because the distinction is historic and functional.
Nothing to do with the position of the mizzen mast relative to the rudder. That’s a racing rule innovation, used in the old CCA rule and then into the IOR, but may have been earlier. Its purpose was to decide how much power the mizzen would provide for handicapping racing fleets.
Nothing to do with the traditional names.
Ketch was a fishing rig. Ketch is closely related to catch. The mizzen has to be big enough to keep the nose of the boat up towards the wind when hauling nets or just make the boat jog along.
The Yawl rig is from a Yawlboat, which is a rowing boat “resembling a ship’s pinnace” with several rowers. So the rig has to be pushed out to the ends of the boat to not get in the way of the oarspersons.
So I would say this is a yawl because the masts are well out in the ends of the boat. But if you using for hauling nets or even rod fishing, I won’t fight you, you can call it a ketch.
Cool, eh!
Michael Storer
