Redd's Pond Boatworks
Building and restoring classic wooden sail, row and power boats in
Marblehead, Massachusetts with the
finest boat building materials and craftsmanship.
Topsails,
My Experience
By Thad Danielson
In 1999 I became the keeper of SEA HARMONY, the last of the Venture design boats built for the Sufflings, built by Ernest Woods, who had also built the two CHARMs, at Horning in 1937. Albert Strange had drawn the lines and a sail plan for Venture in 1917, refining the Suffling idea of an ideal two person cruiser. The sail plan shows a gaff main with yard and club topsail, jib, and marconi mizzen. SEA HARMONY came to me with its original rig, but also an inner fore stay to the stem head carrying a club footed forestaysail AND no topsail. I now know from talking to previous owners that she had had a minimal, unspared topsail not that long before. I also know that the forestay was added by Lad Lavicka and Paul Jones when they were making up new wires in advance of sailing her across the Atlantic in 1974, thinking another reefing option a good idea. It may have been a collision at Newport when another boat clipped SEA HARMONY’s jib stay and took off her mast head that destroyed the old topsail. I know that happened and Dan DeLerais rebuilt the spar including the masthead sheave tor a topsail halyard before they sold her in the middle 1990s, eventually bringing her to me.

Anyway, when I got her there was a fo’csle full of sails but no topsail and looking at the original sailplan I knew she wanted one. Communicating with Pete Clay, then Honorable Secretary for the Albert Strange Association (ASA) I enquired as to the details of building and sailing with a topsail. Pete responded by saying it needed to be flat in a way that sailmakers don’t like to make sails, flat. Otherwise, Pete said he wasn’t too sure of much except that he wanted a topsail too, for his Strange NIRVANA. That Winter when the 1999 ASA Yearbook arrived, Mike Burn had written an article “Topsails”, about how to rig and handle them. That was a great help to me, and I hope Pete too.

Mike wrote about having spars as long as possible with downhauls on the lower ends to make sure the spars will not hang up on other rigging aloft. I made a couple of long spars for a topsail. For the sail itself I got the boatyard crane to hoist me with the sail set and made a measurement of the span between the mast head and the gaff end. I don’t remember what that measurement was, but there are other factors, like the gaff angle, and the consequent angle (relative to horizontal) between the gaff end and the mast head, that come into play that I still felt like I was winging it when I made my sail plan and brought it to a sailmaker I knew. I did use the AS sailplan as my main guide.

I used that topsail for 7 years. The first year sailing to the WoodenBoat Show at Rockland, Maine, a 100 mile passage, the wind was light, maybe 5 knots, astern. We flew the topsail all day in those conditions with the lower sails hanging limp but the topsail full and pulling, with more air aloft. We weren’t going fast but we kept going.

Another time I was out with my stepdaughter and her husband, sailing in Salem Sound, reaching from Marblehead toward Manchester, when 100 year old Friendship sloop TERN came in toward us, passed us by and headed out the Salem Channel past Bakers Island. We followed them and found ourselves becalmed a few hundred yards apart. I thought I might as well do something and put the topsail up instead of taking the sails down and motoring home. Elizabeth liked that idea. I did too, especially after a little while when we started to move. We couldn’t feel any breeze, but the topsail was bellied out showing an onshore breeze as we slid out of the channel toward the outside of Bakers Island. TERN was sitting where we left her until they started their engine, sails still up but no topsail, and motored past us. When they stopped the engine they sat there as before while we glided past. Then we could see the ruffle off shore as the sea breeze filled in below, eventually reaching us and TERN too for an all sail return home, but we were long gone from TERN by then.

That first Summer I took SEA HARMONY to the Classic Boat Show in Boston Harbor. My friend John Crosby sailed to Boston with me and then took the bus back to Marblehead while I hung out for the weekend talking to the crowds that came to walk the floats. They had judging, with Olin Stevens one of the judges who looked at SEA HARMONY, and gave us a plaque as Best Original Condition boat. Sunday afternoon John came back for the sail home. There was a nice Westerly breeze and it was late enough to want to make time so it was up topsail on a broad reach. As it happened, the breeze increased until we judged it blowing 20, still West. Rail down as far as it ever gets we kept the topsail up with no problem for a grand blast back along the coast.

Here’s one of the few pictures I have sailing with the old topsail and sailing in a nice breeze too. This was the last year for that sail, and the others too as it turned out. That was really the jib’s fault. That jib was a Lukas sail, one of a few still in the wardrobe that had come from England with her more than thirty years before. I had had the foot ot the jib repaired once, but every time I took it in the cloth would break a little as I handed it, and it was a beautiful light sail that she needed. When I talked to my friendly sailmaker (Roy Downs in Danvers, not the maker of the topsail shown here) about the jib he said, “You need new sails. Bring them in and we’ll look at them.” When I did that he gave me a price I couldn’t refuse for a whole new suit, and so it went.

Good as it looks, you can see topsail priblems in the picture. The creases across the top of the sail come from too much flex in the club. The tack is unnecessarily low and the leach too short, across the top between head and clew. It worked ok and I learned a lot handling it but I wanted that new topsail and needed to rework the spars. The Winter of 2006-7 I had SEA HARMONY ashore, out of her Winter marina berth, unrigged. When she went back in in late June I got the new jib, main and mizzen in time to sail to Newport for the WoodenBoat Show, staysail and topsail still to come. The middle of August I called Roy Downs about the staysail and mizzen. I hadn’t got to making new measurements for a new plan and Roy asked what to do, so I said, make it a foot longer on the leach and two feet shorter at the tack. I had the new sails in time for the Gloucester Schooner Festival race at the beginning of September.

My original yard had seemed stiff enough, so I cut it down about a foot for the new club and made a new yard, a little heavier than the old one. Sail bent on and hoisted first time for the Gloucester race, it wasn’t set quite right but it won us the race. The race was in the big outer harbor and the wind coming over the land was flukey and high off the water most of the afternoon. The topsail stayed full and pulled us around the course three times when all the other gaffers failed to finish.

I still don’t have any good pictures of SEA HARMONY with the new topsail set, but the next Summer I had it set pretty well for the first time coming up Massachusetts Bay returning from the WoodenBoat Show at Mystic, Connecticut, and took these pictures:


You can see we’ve lost the creases below the leach and she is full. The GPS reading showed an increase of a half knot when the topsail was set in the light all sail breeze.

So, here we are today, well, for the last month. Dieter Empacher, who has been a naval architect in this area for the last 40 years or so asked me some time ago about SEA HARMONY’s sail plan. I think he had a possible client interested in a gaff rig yawl but he may just have liked our look and been interested as well as not too busy. I told him the whole story about Venture, leading to SEA HARMONY, showed him the Albert Strange drawings and the sketch with measurements that I had made when Russell Read was ready to get the rig together for CHARM, SEA HARMONY’s near sister also 33’, the second of the Suffling’s Venture design boats, and built by Woods in 1922. Dieter asked if he could take some of these materials with my measurements and draw up SEA HARMONY’s sail plan. About a month ago after a few revisions Dieter brought me a black on white copy of his drawing. I thought it would be nice for the ASA to have a copy so I started to make contact with England to see where I should send it. Russell said he’d like to see it because he wanted to get a topsail made. Above is a picture of the Dieter Empacher drawing and below, the two topsail details, Strange to the left, Empacher to the right.

I sent a copy of Dieter’s drawing off to Rick Powell for the ASA plan collection but I also told Russell that I’d measure my topsail and spars when I took them off SEA HARMONY for the Winter. When I planned my topsail I was thinking about Mike Burns counsel and Albert Strange’s drawing. If you look at the Strange plan and Dieter’s drawing you see some real differences in detail, the line of the foot and the location of the tack in particular.

Dieter didn’t have any measurements for my sail to work with, only his own ideas and the Strange drawings. Too hard to see here, but the heel of the yard in the Strange drawing comes past the gaff at the throat, with the sail extending some distance more to the tack. The club and foot is shown crossing the gaff on a line to the tack. Dieter’s drawing does show the height of SEA HARMONY’s pole mast compared to the shorter stick drawn for VENTURE.

I had made preliminary measurements and sent them to Russell, but then this week I doubted what I had done and tried to do a better job of it. Here are the e-mails that resulted:

Hello Russell, Yesterday I really stretched out the topsail and have to change the numbers a bit, the worst is the leach, actually 9' 2". The luff is 20' 8" and has some camber built in (maybe 6", maybe a little more) which does seem to tension the sail. That is the sailmakers work. They said, "We know how to make a topsail." and it does work. The foot is 19' 5". When I put these numbers down as a drawing on Dieter's drawing it doesn't look right (clew too low), but from the deck it looks good. From Dieter's drawing the leach would be 9' 4", luff 16' 5", foot 18' 8", but his drawing puts the tack much higher than either mine or as drawn by AS for Venture. The Venture drawing has a throat angle of 60 degrees. Dieter's drawing, which I think is closer to my present configuration shows an angle of 55 degrees, accounting for the shorter leach in the Venture sail plan -- expanding the Venture sail plan in the proportion 33/29.5, shows a leach of 7' 10" with luff and foot both 19' 2". Thad


Then Russell came back with a couple of questions:
Just two questions on the data:

1) I'm not sure what you mean by camber in the luff ?   

My answer: In my reading about topsails there is talk about how the sail is made flat, but the edge is made with some curve (convex) tensioning the spar and creating a belly of some sort in the sail.  I don't know if this is necessary but since I've read of it it can't be a new idea.  Anyway that is clearly how they made my sail.

2) When you state an angle for the throat - e.g. 55 or 60 degrees - I assume this means with the horizontal, otherwise you have a very square sail ! We would have measured it between the mast and the gaff, so the above would be 35 or 30 degrees. Charm was designed at 30 degrees; what it actually is, hence what area the topsail fits into, depends on how hard you peak up the gaff. 

My answer: All you say here is correct.  The throat angle is the reciprocal of the peak angle and the actual angle varies as the peak halyard is set.  I like having the topsail leach (that is the top span) near to the span between the end of the gaff and the mast head because that allows me to set the topsail high or low.  I stated hitch locations (4' 4" down the yard and 5' down the club) because that is where I have my marks, but in really light conditions I can hitch to hoist higher and in heavier air where I still want the topsail I can set it lower.  The hitches are placed so the halyard will be drawn tight to the mast head and the sheet will be out hauling on the foot.  Setting the topsail: the topsail is hanging in the lazyjacks, topsail hitches are made to the spars preferably with the halyard in front of the sheet.  Halyard and sheet are hauled more or less together, the sheet not tight but controlled so as not to catch around a spar end, until the halyard is tight to the sheave and belayed.  Then the tack is downhauled, tight and as far forward as possible -- I carry it down around the mast to the starboard side aft belaying pin on top of the main halyard.  Then the sheet is drawn tight.  Then the various lines are coiled and hung.  The sail is hoisted on the lee side and to port, on the starboard tack.  Lowering is done on the port tack so the sail falls in the belly of the main.  Lowering, the halyard and sheet are released slowly with one hand and the downhaul and other guiding lines (one to the lower end of the club) are pulled with the other hand as necessary until the tack can be handed and the halyard and sheet let go, the sail sliding back into the lazyjacks.

And a final question. You mentioned experimenting with the section of the two yards/spars. What did you decide, and what are they made of ? They look good and light; are they now rigid enough ?

My answer: The spars are sitka spruce and about as light as they can be.  The yard 1 1/2" at the head, 1 7/8", 1/3rd down and 1 3/8" at the toe, 15' 8" long.  The club 1 1/4, 1 5/8, and 1 1/8, and 14' 11".  They seem to be rigid enough. The present club is cut down from my former yard which, with a lighter club was not at all able to hold the top of the topsail but the present spars do quite well and are quite light.

So Russell is off to the sailmaker, we hope, and I’ve put this down in more extensive fashion.

Hoisting in the lee means that as the topsail begins to clear the gaff, breeze coming over the gaff keeps the spars clear of the gaff rigging and for sheeting there is no pressure on the peak halyard rigging to complicate sheeting in hard. Hoisting to port or starboard may be a matter of choice, but hoisting to port means you are on the starboard tack and have right of way so in a tight situation you can hope that you will not be forced to tack in the middle of the hoisting operation.

One of the wonders of the yawl rig is the capacity of the boat to stand head to wind and to self steer under way, both ways I have hoisted the topsail and lowered while sailing alone. Cheers for Albert Strange.

Thad Danielson

Redds Pond Boatworks
Thad Danielson, builder, designer, consultant
1 Norman Street
Marblehead, MA 01945
Land Line: (781) 631-3443
Cell Phone: (617) 834-3915
Email: For More Information


Please mention you saw our website on the Internet!

Redd's Pond First Page| Boats For Sale
Previous Projects: New Construction :: Restoration
Specialty Items | Contact Form