Dear forum members, this is at the moment, a hypothetical question, but I one wanted to improve the upwind performance of a freedom cat schooner, by adding a fractional head sail, is there any way to attach a forestay to a carbon mast? and am i correct in thinking that the mast on freedom yachts rotate? i see many freedom designs have headsails, but am unsure if those designs have rotating masts. the boat i am interested is a Freedom 47 cat schooner with a full keel, i believe built in the uk in the late 80s and may be a one of a kind. i am, as yet, not a freedom owner, but i do very much hope to be soon , i love the concept of the cat rig and the freedom design for short handed family cruising. Any thoughts on this would be very much appreciated, a photo of the forestay arrangements on unstayed freedoms would also be very helpful.
Adding a foresail is possible. Generally I would discourage a fractional rig. As with flying a mizzen staysail you have to add back stays. The gains may be less than the cost and effort. The idea of the cat ketch is simplicity and ease of handling. The early unstayed rigs were not designed for free flying sails. Later freedoms did include fractional sloops but I would expect the carbon layups were different
The freedom 25 had a version with a rotating wing mast. To my knowledge that was the only rotating mast.
Thank you so much for your reply, i understand this would be a large and involved project, it is currently, hypothetical.
To fill in, there is a 1989 freedom 47 pilothouse we are looking at, it is full keel cat schooner, and it is my understanding this may make here very poor to windward. I wonder what tacking angle would you expect a boat like this to achieve? I’m a lazy gent at sea and would never plan a passage to sail up wind, but if pinned in a bay with engine difficulties 90 to 100 degrees would be good and put it in the same ballpark as our old Victory40 ketch.
I only ask about mast rotation, because the broker says the mast do rotate with fixed booms. Surely, if they don’t, the biggest benefit of the cat rig is lost, i.e. being able to let the sail out all the way until you can reef it on a reach. or am i missing something? do forgive my ignorance, and once again, thank you for your input.
The cat sloop freedoms have their boomed jibs. They are on a slack forestay. It obviously does improve up wind performance by creating a slot effect over the main.
however I would suggest that whilst this does improve upwind performance the difference is not a huge amount compared with rigid mast foresails.
I see there are two threads on this. On my F21 with a blade jib I know I can tack through 100 degrees as my autopilot does exactly that and it works. I can point closer maybe 40 degrees to apparent with the jib but it goes better at 45, which translates to about 100 degrees tacking angle.
Thank you for your informative replies and yes, for some reason the post has been duplicate. I edited the original post and for some reason it has posted twice. Apologise.
She is a very pretty boat, any thoughts on sailing characteristics? Unfortunately there is no information out there, she appears to be a one off. What with the cat schooner rig and a full keel.