55
SVN Solovelanet Global
O
n ancient sailing ships, the bowsprit
was introduced to increase the sail
area, to make the ship more leeward,
and to improve manoeuvrability and
course stability. However, modern
boats are designed carefully, with a focus on the
centre of effort and the centre of lateral resistance,
and for this reason they are already centred and
easier to steer.
The bowsprit which is now being seen more and
more often on the bows of cruise boats has a dif-
ferent use, being related to the convenient and ef-
ficient use of the headsails. The first result of ho-
oking the tack of a reaching sail (gennaker, code
0, etc) onto a bowsprit is to move it away from the
mainsail, thus reducing the "obstacle" caused by
the mainsail itself.
So the longer the bowsprit, the less the backwind
on our gennaker, but what is the ideal length of a
bowsprit? There are no set parameters. If you look
around, you will see boats of the same length and
with similar sail plans fitted with bowsprits of com-
pletely different lengths. Longer bowsprits make
boats faster, but less easy to manoeuvre. Imagine
a 10 metre boat with a 2 metre bowsprit. Such a
boat would be very fast under sail, but when it co-
mes to getting back to the berth, she would not be
so easy to handle.
by Fabio Amoretti
