Thanks a lot!! I was just searching for the name of the Solent Stay on google and got to a nice class about the mast we are just assembling!! I always love you explanation!!

This is probably the most informative video on whole KZfaq about the basics of standing rigging.

I've been searching around the web for a beginner's explanation of sailing dynamics and rigging to satisfy my onset fascination of sailing, and all I've encountered are confusing biased justification of why a certain system is better because it is what they use in the Vendee Globe or American Cup.This is, by far, the best no BS, no hype explanation I've encountered on the net that actually makes sense on a cruising point of view.. Thank you so much.

You are a fantastic teacher. I learned a lot about rigging and the forces on a boat that I never really thought about before. Thank you!

As the owner of a cutter, I totally agree that 'gentling' your boat in heavy weather is the way to go. Less heal, less strain on the rigging and less strain on the crew. It's also makes the voyage enjoyable rather than a constant challenge.

I don't know how many people I've listened to explain rigging, but now that I've heard your explanation I actually understand it! Thank you.

looking forward to the Gaff rigged schooner model with dowels and twine

Nice job Herbie, the Solent rig also gives you the option of a simple ready to go tradewind downwind set up with both sails poles out , you have a great rig ,potentially reefable by rolling the head sails. There might be enough sail area to lower the chafe prone mainsail and still make decent time on a passage safely . Cheers Warren

Exceptional teacher, could not be explained any clearer. I now totally understand. Thank you so much.

I love this video. It was the first time I listened to Herbie on Sailing Vessel Wisdom at the Rigging Doctor KZfaq channel. I remember thinking quietly , " This kid is going to make a great sailor".

Excellent!! It explains perfectly why I love my 37” Cutter. Thanks, Herb!

Great information! I’ve had a 80’ Hunter 37c for 20 years & have never heard it that clearly explained.

Great explanation of reefing. Many think you reef to avoid heeling too much. True, but it’s really important for rig longevity, to not over stress the mast, and for safety.

That was great information, and I must say I am very much enjoying the rigging talks.

I have a cutter. Great vid, very insightful and helped me alot. Thanks!

Thanks for a really good discussion about different kinds of rigging and some of the forces on the rigging. Totally agree if things get too windy just reef. It's the sensible thing to do, and it's easier on the boat.

Thank you very much for the great explanation. I agree with you what concerns the healing of the boat and I also prefer reefing earlier than later, it's easier and less stress for the rigging and the rudder. I really enjoy your videos, very interesting and informative content. Greetings from Germany and Fair Winds.

Best explanation I have ever heard. Thanks so much Very informative of basic sailing stresses

I am just learning about sailing. I have been baffled by all the terms used for sail configurations. Your explanation just answered about a hundred questions I had rolling around in my head. Thank you very much for your presentation!

that's great information Herb. I am considering adding a second forestay to create a simple downwind rig so now I know I'll have a Solent. That's kinda interesting too because the first time I sailed this boat was in The Solent (for your non uk subscribers - that's the bit of water between the Isle of Wight and mainland UK :-) )

Also I hope maybe in the sail section that you get to describing not just the forces on how wind goes around a sail but why we want the wind to be offset and therefore our sail is also offset thereby having the force push the boat in the direction you want the boat to go. Well and then there is angle of attack to prevent a stall or to induce a stall.

Succinct, clear explanation of an extremely complex situation

Thankyou for many great videos. I had long agoo a small sloop (Staley 19) that I converted to a slutter, not by adding a inner fore stay but by adding a bowspreat and a outer fore stay. It was mostly to better light wind performance, and it worked realy well in light wind going against choppy sea, gave both better balance and better run against the waves. But why surprised me most was how good she balanced in medium winds going upwind when I added so much lateral force forward of the existing sailplane. Now I start to wonder how she realy was balanced before.

Your hand gestures indicating wind force... Makes so much sense. Thank you. Beautiful exploration

Great Video ... I've been sailing a lot of years and this is the most succinct explanation I've found. Thanks!

Thanks for the in depth explanation on sails. :)

I have owned sloops, a 44’ cutter and a 46’ ketch. Hey! They all work. And I liked them all. For a larger boat, really liked the ketch, especially short handed. Vessels under 40, yeah, a sloop is fine.

Great video. This stimulated a lot of ideas. Mast further aft, rotating wing mast, very high aspect main, most drive coming from foresails. I expect it's all been done

We have ours cutter rigged. The most easy, best balance, lazyest setup we have is second reef on the main and the staysail up. The second reef on the main allows both running backstays to be tightened at the same time and the boom and the sail has clearance to pass both. Just awesome setup! The only problem is that we allmost never see enough wind for that setup! ;-)

Thank you sooo much for your excellent explanations and rigging lessons. I find you are the best instructor out there. You are so clear and concise the way you demonstrate everything that it's easy to understand. I am in the process of making a change from sloops to buying a cutter. Now that you have given me the basic understanding of a cutter I am excited to get out there and try this. Thanks again

And this highlights a comparative advantage for my trimaran. The beam is wide enough for the swept sidestays to reduce the accute angle. That in turn leaves the wing mast free to rake fore and aft. When the jib is roller reefed, rake the mast back to move the CoE aft. Then again, if my boat is heeling 15%, I have bigger problems. Reef early and reef often!

Thank you so much for these excellent explanations. I am just adding a mobile inner fore-stay to my Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 49 and I'll double check some things now. Just to make sure the new headsail is not pulling too much to the front, without back-stay support. Thanks again!

It's the same for flying airplanes. Sure when it's just you and maybe one other person you can do 45 60° Banks but if you've got passengers you definitely want to do shallow Banks and make sure you're doing your coordinated turns

Damn! Rigging school in 20 min!! Information worth gold!! Thank you so mich!

This is a really helpful video. Thanks so much! Makes me think twice about heading offshore with a roller furler, especially an older furler. I think I’d rather set the capehorn and go forward to hank on the storm jib, even solo. You had me at downhaul and drifter :-) :-) :-)

I find this series of discussions about rigging setups excellent. I would love to see this entire series redone with something behind the sailboat masts and rigging so that they are more visible. The color scheme of the background and the cord and dowels used for masts are similar enough that you can only clearly see them where the blue pillows are.

On our little trailer-sailor, we have been trying headsails set flying. Not very close winded but not bad. We have a genoa up front hanked onto the stay, with a downhaul, and we are thinking of launching a small jib set flying behind the stay for strong winds. This sail position is also suitable for a light weather spinnaker of some description which we have been trying out.

This is pretty new to me, but the solent setup on my ketch is removable. It is done with another halyard loop that comes out about 5 feet from the top of the mast and then reattaches just above where it comes out of the mast. This halyard has a block attached to it, and the sail used has an internal stay sewn into the luff. To deploy the sail, you attach the tack to the fitting on deck (a couple feet behind the head stay) and the head of the sail to the block on the halyard. Then you hoist the sail. There is no need to keep the solent in place while you have the genoa deployed, so it is not in the way of the genoa when tacking or jibing.

Very informative video. Cutters looks so cool but clearly made for going in a strait line and not for tacking.

Good video. My favorite is to have a staysail boom so that instead of tacking the staysail sheets you simply tack the backstays. Short tacking in light wind, drop the jib and you can ignore the backstays, just leave them slack. Also, rig your backstays to the center line of the boat to eliminate off center forces at the mast.

That's really being in tune with your pet 😂

Very good explanation but you should also include in this context the 3/4 or 7/8 rigged sloops which share some features with cutters (like backstays). They are quite common.

Hope you don't end up confusing a lot of your viewers with so much details. Wannabee sailors might just drop the towel thinking this is too much. Let me add more to the confusion, if I may: 1- Modern rigs use swept back spreaders to do away with check stays while still providing better support for the mast. They also keep the mast up when both running backstays are loose. Sure these spreaders don't allow to swing the boom all the way out, but that's no problem because modern boat make better VMG when gybing than when running straight downwind. So no need to swing the boom all the way out anymore. 2- Wind force on sails is function of the square of the wind speed. so if you double wind speed, then you dradruple the force on the sail. That's why reefing on time is good so that you don't end up putting excessive and unnecessary stress on your rig. 3- Hulls are not designed to move through the water efficiently when heeled over more than 30 deg. This is why when you reef, most the time you notice that the boat goes just as fast as it did before reefing , but with less heel. What more do you ask for? 4- The advantage of the staysail with 2 or 3 reef in the main is that it keeps the sail plan nicely balanced and centered with respect to the center of resistance of the keel, meaning no excessive lee or weather helm, and that is important when it's blowing 30 or 40 knots. 5- Inner forestays are no longer permanently fixed on modern fast cruising cutters. They can be releasable, or even integrated as part of a continuous furling staysail, meaning you only rig up the whole set when you need it, just like with a gennaker or code 0. This is now possible because the stay is textile and no longer stainless steel cable.

Just to add another variation. Our Solent rig has the two headsail furlers, parallel, about two feet apart. In light winds we can tack the genoa between the two stays. We have runners as the attachment of the inner furler is about 7ft down from the top of the mast. Going to windward in heavy weather the runners give is an advantage with mast stiffness and reduced mast pumping. It's an option we like.we set it up like this out of preference. It works well

Thankyou for such informative videos. Really useful stuff.

This is one of the best explanations of the basic concepts and comparisons of these sail types. Just found your channel and subbed up. Thanks!

My West Solent is similar to the Solent design you mention, but the Solent stay doesn’t run to the top of the mast, it runs to the same point as a cutter goes to on the mast, 2/3rds up.

Thanks for the great info!

That was a lot to take in. Explained a lot. Amazing video. My Santana was my first sailboat and it took me forever to understand the running back stays. Now that I have been at it longer I’m looking forward to not having them on my beneteau. I also enjoy a deep heel to shake up the kids and guests but after thinking about that pressure I may slow it down, lol.

All sensible information, thank you.

I've heard you say many times that the boat was balanced and I wondered what you meant by that. In this video I would come to the conclusion at least 15 minutes into it that balanced is the height of the pressure on each sail and if the heights are the same for all the sails then it's balanced. My curiosity is there another dimension to this

Awesome explanations, thank you.

Thank you , I have learned so mini thing from you all , thank you , Andy

Another great one! “Too Fast to Fish” -sounds like a tee shirt to me! I’ve really liked your new format, it’s really fun for me and different, Thanks!

Great Video. Thanks! I have a 1960 Skorgenes (Norway) 41' Mahogany Sloop. It has 1 back stay, 2 running back stays (steel cable with block and tackle to the cockpit), check stays, cutter rig set up with sail track on the mast and fore deck and 2 forestays coming off a "Y" at the bow, both going to the mast head, one port & one starboard. I have NO furlers. I can run a solent rig (I know technically the Solent is aft of the forestay, not next to it). with either the Genoa or the Jib flying with no tacking problem as the No. 1 sail doesn't have to squeeze between the space that would be there if it were a normal Solent rig. Oh and I don't have a boom Vang, I have preventers, one port and one starboard. The Naval Architect that designed this boat for an Oslo businessman built it for North Sea and Baltic Sea navigation. She is now being refurbished while sailing the San Francisco Bay Area. Fair winds and following seas.........

Very informative. I bought a 39' cutter rigged Cavalier several years ago and decided to take off the inner stay and running back stays for the time being, as I'm currently only doing local coastal cruising ( plus I'm also relatively new to sailing - so wanted to simplify my rigging). As I get ready to do some offshore sailing, I've debated whether or not to reinstall the cutter rig. After seeing this video, I'm most certainly going to set it back up as a cutter. Thank you for the clear and precise explanation.

Love the bucket of rocks analogy. Thanks for the clear, concise video!

I learned a thing or two, maybe ten things. Thanks buddy.

With the twin spreader swept back rig of a lot of boats one can virtually set up a cutter rig to the top spreader with enough arft pressure from the swept back rig to do away with a runner , though i do have runners set up for heavier weather tied off to the rigging on a bungie, Cats with there wide base & swept back rig do away with runners completely .Nice post , like the bird

Sailing style can be a maintenance issue. An aggressive sailing style increases wear and maintenance. A conservative sailing style reduces forces that add wear to critical vessel components. Balance seems to be a key ingredient to many things in life, not just the mast and sail plan.

This is by far one of the best 'teaching/explaining " videos I've seen. Thank You!

Fascinating and totally comprehensible. I'm a newb and feel like I got most of that explanation.

Very interesting, and informative. I agree with most of your healing philosophy, less strain on the rigging, sure. I have a Jason 35, cutter rigged. Thanks.

“It won’t work. That was tried in the 70’s and stopped in the 70’s”. Unintentionally the most accurate description of an entire decade.

"Baby Stays" or "Baby Backstays": We (the boat and me) have Baby Backstays which some people have called running backstays and are so close to the shrouds you might think they are auxiliary shrouds. What do you think their proper name is? 23 foot cutter trailer sailer. The Baby Backstays are from the gunwale 22 inches aft of the mast to the spreaders, and each has it's own set of double blocks (2 pairs of 'pulleys'). Boom goes out about 75-80 degrees preventer before hitting baby stays, ok for me. Backstay adjustable double blocks, should I get a tension gauge $140? Mast post from keel to deck. Does rigging tightness affect tacking? Downhauls on staysail and jib are terrific. In higher winds I downhaul the jib straight into a sailbag rigged on forestay. Downhauls (thin line, light load) led to cockpit. Halyards for staysail and jib also led to cockpit. Three reefs on main led to cockpit. Everything led to cockpit, easy to adjust every line, easy to singlehand (I thank the previous owner for the beautiful rigging refit). Thanks for making the point about the mast being a lever arm to lift the keel. Now I see that a lot of heel is a big stress on the keel's pivot bolt and bolt hole on pivoting retractable keel, 600 lb on this trailer sailer. Knockdown is a concern with only 600 lb keel: boat sank before previous owner's total refit. I set sail for good handling not max speed. ymmv. I'm not in a hurry. When I sail 'not-fast' I get to sail more hours; if I sailed max fast I would reach port too soon. Thank you for your really clear explanations. Budster Budman, April 2023

Huge trend today towards having even 3 headsails flying them all at the same time. Even move the mast aft and narrowing the mainsail. All done with furlers during offshore racing and always furling/redeploy rather than tacking or gybing. In five years, the world is moving on.

Very nicely done.

best explanation i've listened too, thanks man

That was one of the best and simple explanations I've seen. Thanks.

excellent explaining

Bravo!! Best explanation and advice I have seen on the topic.

Thanks for this. Great explanations. When are you guys going sailing again.

Its amazing the amount of terms there are for different setups.

As it turns out all I had to do is watch this video instead of bugging you. Should have known the Rigging Docter would have a video on exactly what I was asking about. Figures Thanks a bunch my friend, love ya.

Thanks for the explanation on boat design and rigs . Now I am happy with the boat I am building.👍

I would love to see this whole discussion done again, but in the context of multihulls! 90% fractional rigs seem fairly common on fat and heavy production cats, but I have no idea why. I have a trimaran (Neel47) with a cutter rig complete with check stays (set quite far aft of the mast, and very wide due to the width). It's really hard to find any information on the best way to operate the rig, or what is limits may be. Interestingly the staysail is removable and the halyard is two to one going to a 48 electric winch so you can really crank it on and create some bend (it would be more in a carbon mast, but ours is only aluminium) right through the center of the mast. You can do this with a full main with a really deep roach. There aren't any backstays to otherwise apply bend. It isn't until the AWS is over 30kts that e have the second reef in. At that point, the head of the main is just below the attachment of the staysail.

In my experience, on a sloop, you go faster with a reefed main and jib in higher winds.

solid rod fore stay take it you have not heard of them great for inner stays

Thanks, I know way more now thanks to you!

Super excellent description and info!!! I was really hoping there was a video like this and you have done it for me!!! Cheers Mate, and happy sailing!!!

EXCELLENT. I learned a lot.

Thank you so much for this informative video. You are an excellent teacher. I just subscribed to your channel. keep up the great work.

This was a super useful video! Cheers 🙏

Love your videos very helpful. Only a suggestion if I may. Is I would use bright diff colour strings for model as it is hard to see on screen so colour ones would stand out more

Very good video. Thank you for the good info. Well explained.

Thanks Mr. Pirate

a little bit of a cats cradle explaining with the toothpicks and yarn but it was actually pretty clear.

What about covering a sloop with a high aspect main and large genny? When you have this you need a baby stay and running backstays to stop the mast pumping. My boat is a Wauquiez Pretorian 35

I've been working on a little 18ft boat I bought last year. I don't believe the previous owner ever put her in the water, and I've been trying to figure out how the previous-but-one owner had her rigged. I have three similarly crispy sails, of which two are headsails; one is a smaller genoa with a boltrope to fit in a roller with UV edging along the foot and leech, and the other is a larger genoa with a zippered sleeve up the luff and no UV edging. I assume that the larger is intended as a light air sail to be flown from its own dedicated headstay with the smaller sail furled, or perhaps to be poled out on a run in a twin-headsail configuration. I haven't had her rigged yet, since I have some repairs yet to do before I can step the mast, but looking at the stem fittings for rigging forestays, even if two can be rigged simultaneously the gap between them would only just clear the furling gear. Have you ever seen something like that? Two close forestays like a solent, but with roller furling only on one? And if so, how the hell would I tack the outer sail? It would seem daft to have the furler on the outer stay, since the inner one would get in the way even when its sail was stowed below; but if the furling gear lives on the inner stay, when I do choose to fly the big genny, there's no way it would go through that gap surely! Perhaps he was using a temporary inner stay to fly the big genoa and clipping it off near the mast foot somewhere the rest of the time? I'm really scratching my head trying to figure this out!

Man! Your guys’ vids are so informative! Thank you !!!

Great information, except for your description of the forces when the boat is healed over. The fulcrum is going to be somewhere below-deck. NOT at the masthead, where it might appear to some that you were describing. I know most sailors will understand what you meant, but some noobs might not. If those forces were at the mast-head then we'd all be screwed and no sailboat would ever leave anchor. So a better way to think about it is to pick up that same "mast" with 10-lbs of rocks at the bottom, but gripping the "mast" near the bottom, where the rotational forces are actually located, rather than at the top. When you consider the actual forces involved from this perspective, you notice that the forces really aren't that strong or dangerous. Obviously, the larger the boat, the heavier the ballast, the stronger the mast and related rigging must be. But it's still not quite as dramatic...

We have three headsail stays. Two forward ones with roller furlers. The other is hank on. Not sure what it is called but the whole system gives lots of options.

Bro, you can gybe the headsail on the outside. If you're good, you can tack outside too.

Thanks for the explanation. Maybe use colored yarn against a light background for better contrast.

The long-keeled cutter is King !

Great start but Lots of incomplete information on the dynamics of the rigging on sail use, boat performance, and the technical reasons why one would choose a particular rig. Are you a weekend sailor, are you cruising and sailing the same tack for days, are you basically a wednesday night racer. Then how are these sails cut for each particular rig. How do they perform relative to wind conditions, boat keel, rudder configurations etc.

Sail too fast in bad weather and you can broach you will stress your rigging possibility breaking something or at the very least aging the rigging faster. Also not reefing means there is no redundancy you have used up all the righting moment so if an unexpected wave comes along you can get knocked down.

Good comments. I love cutters but you would also love a ketch for steady sails.

I personally love cutters for sail availability reasons. Though I wouldn't sneeze at a normal sloop either, they are just more work, and have larger mainsails that can cause issues....

First time, somebody can explain the advantages and disadvantages of the different forship riggings..