Making a motorsailer manageable
If you find a boat that’s just right except for a rig that makes her impossible to manage, what do you do? Make a lot of changes, says David Harding
Towards the end of last year, a friend of mine found a boat of just the sort he had been hankering after for years.
She was a 40ft (12m) steelhulled motor-sailer designed by Bruce Roberts; a cutter-headed ketch with a trawler-style hull, a long shallowish keel and a pair of supplementary bilge keels. Based on Roberts’s PCF (Pacific Coast Fisher) design, she had been built by her owner to meticulous standards over a period of six years before being launched in 2010. Then she was sailed from the East Coast to Devon where, for various reasons, she had sat on her mooring ever since.
She was on the market for what appeared to be a realistic price, so we went to have a look. She had been beautifully fitted out and the engineering, electrical and plumbing work also appeared to be first-rate. The owner knew his stuff and had cut no corners. After having the hull professionally built, he completed the boat for his wife and himself to sail in their retirement, so getting things right was the priority. It had been a labour of love: man-hours were not an issue.
Not plain sailing
For all his technical proficiency, the owner knew little about rigs and sails. Here he handed over to the professionals, engaging the services of a spar manufacturer and a local sailmaker. The PCF 40 typically has a gaff mainsail, but Marney was given a Bermudan alternative for easier handling. At least, easier handling was the idea. On going to see the boat, we soon realised that the prospective owner and his wife would never be able to manage her on their own as she was. Even two fit young crew would have their work cut out.
The two headsails were fitted to roller-reefing systems of the endless-line variety; not everyone’s favourite arrangement, but they worked. That was about as good as it got. Both the mainsail and mizzen were conventional sails with short battens, plastic slides and nothing to make life easy – not even lazyjacks or integral sail covers.
A substantial wheelhouse meant that the main boom had to be high enough above the deck to clear it, but its excessive height called for some climbing, stretching and balancing even from the reasonably tall and mobile when it came to shackling on the halyard or putting on the sail cover. Steps on the mast were of limited help.
On the wheelhouse roof was the mainsheet traveller, which worked a lot better than the mainsheet whose 12mm diameter was far too great for the blocks. The sheet had to be pulled through them whether the main was being eased out or sheeted in.
The mainsail itself was far from impressive. It had little roach – there was scope for a lot more – and was short in both luff and foot.