Sailing 102 The Schooner

Way back in May of 2017 I thought that I would write a few words on sailing a schooner. First of all, few people actually know what a schooner is let alone how to sail one. 

On my schooner, Merrymaid, we normally sailed  around with five sails up. As an aside, Merrymaid was the Middle English word that morphed into Mermaid. I didn't name her. That was her name when I bought her in 1979 and that was her name her when I sold her in 2014. That was thirty five years of unadulterated joy for me. But back to the "How to" part. 

A ketch is, what us  purists like to say, a schooner going backwards. The ketch has two masts, a mainmast in front, and a shorter mizzen mast aft. FYI, a yawl has it's MIZZEN MAST aft of the steering station while a ketch's MIZZEN is forward of the rudder post.

A schooner has it's shorter mast, called a FOREMAST, forward and it's taller MAINMAST farther aft. There is a JIB sail all of the way forward.  Aft of the jib is the FORE STAYSAIL and aft of the foremast is the MAIN STAYSAIL. Above the MAIN STAYSAIL usually is the FISHERMAN SAIL. It spans the two masts and is raised by two halyards, one on each masts. The FISHERMAN has four corners unlike the three on a traditional Bermuda rig. In addition to the TACK and CLEW the HEAD is replaced with a THROAT and PEAK as on a GAFF rig. Lastly there is a MAINSAIL which is hoisted on the MAINMAST. The MAIN SAIL can either be three sided as on a Bermuda rig or four sided if the boat is Gaff rigged.

The trick to sailing a schooner, and yes most every skill set  has it's tricks, is maintaining the "slot". IE keeping the air flow complete all of the sails. I used telltales inserted at two strategic points on the JIB and FORE STAYSAIL. I also had telltails tied onto the outer shrouds of both masts. I initially used two telltails at the luff of the main but after thirty five years I felt I could stop using them. Some people use strips of magnetic recorder tape but I preferred using bright red knitting yarn, it was easier to see. 

The JIB and FORE STAY SAIL telltails were trimmed to keep them all flying straight back, the MAIN STAY SAIL was trimmed so that the shroud telltails would fly horizontally. The MAIN SAIL was trimmed like a main sail as on any other sailboat. The FISHERMAN was trimmed so that it "looked right".

When reaching, which is as good as it gets on a schooner, we took down the FISHERMAN and raised the GOLLYWOBBLER. A  GOLLYWOBBLER is "a very large quadrilateral staysail set between the foremast and mainmast of a schooner". It fills all of the space between the two masts. Because the MAIN STAY SAIL blankets the wind to the GOLLYWOBBLER, we would take the
MAIN STAY SAIL down after the GOLLYWOBBLER was hoisted. The TACK of the GOLLYWOBBLER was led through a snap shackle on the end of the MAIN MAST BOOM. 

I'm sure I'm forgetting some things, but this should cover most everything.