Gaff sails don't stow correctly

[DucksnakeNZ]

Having grown up around classic yachts, and sailed with my dad for many years on Ngatira, which we converted back to a gaff rig in the early 2000's, when I see gaff's come down in game I cringe every time

In game, the sail is pulled up to the top inner corner... huh?

I understand this may be a limitation of animation, but surely it's not a whole lot harder to animate it properly. Perhaps it was simply a mistake, since you don't get see many gaff rigs around the place!!!

Here's a vid of how gaff's are stowed:

 

 

And out of interest, if anyone wants to know, this is Ngatira, the boat I spent much of my childhood on!

 

 

Oh, and when on a reach/close hauled (sailing more into wind), the gaff can be pulled in far more than is animated in the game currently. As shown in this generic diagram:

[DeRuyter]

@DucksnakeNZ I agree!! Boy she is a beautiful traditional boat. Custom build or class? Look a bit like a classic Herreshoff design

[Kubrat]

I agree also with your suggestion.  Thanks for posting the video, very interesting to watch.

[Tom Farseer]

@DucksnakeNZ I wondered about that as well for a while.
Well.. I mostly wondered about how some of the naval history buffs on here weren't up in arms about it already.
Turns out that a lot of historical ships did indeed stow their spanker that way.

One example being Old Ironsides here

Edit: Another example would be the Niagara:


Both methods probably have their own pros and cons.
Reefing is probably interesting on that Spanker. But stowing and setting is most likely easier and quicker since you skip hauling about all that wood.

Edited November 13, 2019 by Tom Farseer

[DucksnakeNZ]

Tom Farseer, thank you, very informative post! I guess when they get up to that scale it does become easier to hoise the sail up into the top corner like that. Maybe it's a US thing also? given both those boats had US flags, but my guess would be it's a tall ship thing.. I didn't get to spend much time with the tall ships around the coast in NZ, not enough to notice little details like that at least. I also leanred a new sailing word, spanker! Hah. had to look it up, one guess on the etymology of that one!

And DeRuyter, she's a 1904 baileys. Was built for racing. At the turn of the century two families dominated the racing cutter building in Auckland, the Logans, and the Baileys. Logan still exsist to this day, as a clothing brand now funny enough. Ngatira was built by Charles Bailey Jr, and is a B class, though i wonder if the class rules may change between countries.  The two were prolific, pumping out a new boat every couple years, and there's still many on the water in Auckland. There is a few Herreshoff's that have made their way over here too! We bought it in 1998, it had been butchered in the 70's, they converted it to a bermudan, and put a plywood doghouse on it, so in 2000 my dad took it out of the water and did a deck-off restoration, going back to the original plans. We thought it'd take about 4 years, so naturally it was relaunched around 2008... I do miss going out on her, but my dad does still own it, so every now and then we get to go out sailing when I go back home and visit.

I took these pics a couple years ago, this was shot in the Hauraki golf, off a little island called Moturekareka

Edited November 14, 2019 by DucksnakeNZ

[Tom Farseer]

Glad I could be of help 😃
I think it's neither quite an American nor a Tall Ship phenomenon. L'Hermione would be a European example for stowing the spanker upwards.
Whereas all Tall Ships I have seen IRL (say "SS Thor Heyerdahl" (My home away from home) or the "Brigg Roald Amundsen") raise and lower their gaff. So my guess (and I stress the word guess, I am full on speculating here) is that it is related more to the era than to the place of origin.

Edit: Man! Ngatira is a beauty indeed!

Edited November 14, 2019 by Tom Farseer

[Bonden]

According to contemporary sources (see the extraordinarly accurate engravings of Baugean, 1764-1819), commented by J Harland in a beautiful book (Ships and Seamanship, The Maritime Prints of JJ Baugean, 2000, eg prints 31, 32, 35), gaff sails ('brigantine' or 'brig-sail'), until mid-XIXth century, were brailed in / stowed like in the photo of the Niagara.