The disadvantage of this rig is that sufficient canvas to drive a heavy, full-bodied boat cannot be spread; consequently, a true knockabout is a comparatively roomless craft.
The false knockabout, a bastard craft that is becoming very common, is one in which the sail area is increased by extending the headsail on a bowsprit, and running the boom outboard.
The pole-mast sloop has many warm advocates, and is without question a far better rig than the old sloop, hampered with topmast and lofty gear, but it shares with all single-masted vessels the faults that are common to the type. The most serious of these is, that you cannot shorten sail except by reefing. This can be done with the yawl, ketch and schooner rigs.
I have heard many men, and men of experience, decry the yawl rig, giving as their opinion that it is inferior in every way to the short-rigged sloop. But I have generally found that these men have formed their judgment from the actions of one boat, and that failing to confirm preconceived opinions they have condemned the type, root, bole and branch.
In an article upon the yawl rig, written some time back, I explained one of the reasons why this rig came into favor, and why it has lost favor with many who at first highly valued it. I cannot do better than reprint these remarks:
It has been said that the worst enemy a man can have is his best friend. Howsoever this may be in the world of men, it is most certainly so in the world of things, and nowhere has unmeasured eulogy of the best friend wrought greater havoc than in the case of the yawl rig. Unfortunately for the yawl rig, it has been repeatedly chosen to drive the craft of the writing lonesome sailor, and consequently it has figured to a marked degree in yachting literature, and as these writers have lavished upon it page upon page of unqualified praise, the effect has been to lift the rig into a singular and prominent position, and to surround it with a glamour not the less charming because a sparkle of truth concentrates and enhances its delusive glitter.
Yawl Rigs
There is no question but what narratives like those penned by the famous single-hand sailor McMillan were the cause of the yawl's sudden elevation to favor in American waters, and there is no question but what some books are responsible for much of the fabulous that envelopes the rig. There are few of us who would be ready to swallow all that a lover might say in praise of his mistress, and yet a man is just as likely to magnify the points and virtues of his vessel as he is those of his Dulcinea; therefore we cannot be too careful in accepting the evidence of the infatuated yachtsman or in adopting his finding as infallible precedents. For, often carried away by the good behavior of his craft, he jumps at a conclusion, attributing to one quantity that which should be adjudged to the fabric as a whole. This is often the case; and again, too frequently is the rig of the vessel blamed for results which are the sum of defects altogether foreign to a peculiar sparring and canvasing.
