Here is the boat without mast, boom, shrouds, forestay, mainsail

A boat without mast (as you know it), shrouds, forestay, boom and mainsail?  The boat is coming where the sails are supported by a self-supporting pyramid. You got it right!

TREE? SARTIE? USELESS AND HARMFUL!

The idea of the mastless (traditional) boat is from Marco Ravasi, a “technical mind” who was involved for years in the design of industrial cable machinery and who, having fallen in love with sailing, sailed enough small boats to realize how “traditional masting and its loads end up deforming the deckhouse and even the structure of the boat. I saw it with my own eyes on the old Capirinha. (9.15 x 3.05 m, mythical “lake” boat, ed.) Of which I was the owner for seven years“, Ravasi recounts.

“The shrouds then are very close to the broadside, leaving little room for those who wish to pass sideways. It is not only inconvenient from the point of view of comfort“. Ravasi explains how “any person who, in order to pass, supports himself to the rigging, as is the practice, applies a horizontal force on it. Let’s assume it is 10 kg? This translates as a vertical load of at least 200 kilograms on the structure of the boat–think over time how much stress the hull is subjected to! And what about the shrouds while sailing? Upwind, the leeward one is becalmed or at least almost unladen. This means that the upwind one is stressed for twice the preload value“.

THE SECRETS OF THE BOAT WITHOUT MAST, BOOM, SHROUDS, MAINSAIL

Hence the idea-which will certainly cause discussion-of getting rid of the traditional rigging and mast, replacing it with A system of three aluminum rods arranged like the edges of the side surface of a pyramid having an isosceles triangle as its base, the vertices of which correspond one to the bow and two to the side ends of the stern of the hull, that is, at the points of greatest rigidity of the hull itself.

“
The rod-rod and rod-hull connections
“, Ravasi relates.
are made by means of hinges, which allows the structure to be considered isostatic, thus with rods subjected only to axial loads
“. The project for which Ravasi filed the patent was carried out on a 6.5 m boat with just over two meters of beam.

“The rods are 7.5 m long and have a tapered taper that allows them to be connected at the end by hinges. Those on the transom end with a ball joint, which provides some freedom of movement even in the case of less than perfect parallelism between the base and head pins. The bow one is connected to the hull with a gimbal that prevents it from rotating on itself“. Above, the rods are linked together with a special system of stainless steel pins and aluminum forks.

HELLO RANDA!

What about the sails, you will say? “The sail is composed of two jibs: with respect to the foremast, one, larger (14 sq. m.), is inferred slightly forward and one, smaller (10 sq. m.), slightly aft; both extend almost to the stern. They are hoisted with an overhead pulley system that allows the two halyards to run along the two stern rods. I designed them in such a way that they are no lower than a boom and pass over the head of a person sitting in the cockpit“.

Therefore, Ravasi summarizes, “the free boat deck provides more space for people on board, there is no boom ‘danger’, and the boat is not subject to any load (there is no mast or shrouds); upwind it allows more “tightening” in the wind: the smaller jib has no limits. When not sailing, no preload stresses are placed on the boat, only the own weight of the structure itself. Besides the sails, there is nothing else to adjust such as shrouds, stays, etc..“.

WAS THERE A NEED FOR THIS SYSTEM?

The question, which if you have come this far you will have already asked yourself, is, “was there aneed?“. Let Marco answer directly: “I did not try to design a performance system to run the boat. Neither an aesthetically ‘refined’ solution. With the three-rod system, the boat will not be ultrafast, but just comfortable, indeed very comfortable to handle. I am thinking, for example, of an elderly crew, or those who feel like going out alone, or even those who don’t care about adjustments and speed. Think of the automobile world: the comparison is with a car with an automatic transmission. You get on and you only have to worry about turning the steering wheel, pressing the accelerator and the brake“.

The system, Ravasi concludes, can have an application on small and medium-sized boats, up to 10 to 12 meters. “You may also consider replacing aluminum with carbon. Which, especially on slightly larger boats, in addition to being lighter, has much greater strength“.

Who knows, if he were still alive, what Ernesto Tross, the man who hated the boom and claimed that the safe boat was one without a mainsail!

READ MORE

Have we intrigued you? Would you like to learn more about the rig designed by Marco Ravasi and the boat without mast, boom, shrouds and mainsail? You can contact him directly for more info or if you have any doubts to clarify.

His email is marcoravasi@hotmail.it, he will be happy to answer your questions!

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