Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

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Fixed mast?

Here in NL we have a type of mast that can be dropped under sail and re-set right after crossing under a bridge. This is a pretty exciting operation best practiced a large number of times without the presence of a bridge before you try it for real. Failures tend to be fairly spectacular.

Here a demo on a very small boat, I've seen this done with a big Tjalk and that was most impressive (but I can't find any video of that):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTwGCPgCsII

With a big ship it will look like an accident is about to happen until the last moment when the sail drops, the mast gets dropped backwards and they are barely out from under the bridge on the far side or the whole operation happens in reverse resulting in very little lost speed.

My uncle developed something similar for his boat but only the top. The idea was to have a 15-ish meter high mast fit under the Hollandse Brug (12.8 meter high bridge). He put a hinge in the mast and added a lot of stays to allow this to happen.

He is a maritime engineer, so he had it all calculated out to ensure it would hold up in rough weather. And knowing how racy he sails, I am pretty sure its been put to the test.

That sounds super cool :) Interesting that he special cased it for that one bridge, and good that the water level there is reasonably stable, but that would definitely require some checking before making a run at a later date because the waterschappen are known to occasionally change their policy and suddenly you'll find that your 'known depth' is off by a meter either way. Lower wouldn't be much of a problem I guess but higher very well could be.

Yes, keel-stepped mast. I used to have a boat where I could remove the mast myself - but having a rig (that you wouldn't bring sailing with you) made it easier and less dangerous to the boat. I never did take the mast down on the water.

Most larger boats in the US do not have masts you can remove without some equipment. This is because the mast is 50-60' and really heavy. Even if it is deck-stepped, you're not going to be able to do that on the water easily.

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