Dear Editor,

Jeremy Beare is wrong to say that on the boom is the only way to get oars out of the way. I am well pleased with my own arrangement, on the foredeck. It happens that I have a bowsprit; two self-supporting, slightly flexible eyes are fixed each side of it, to receive the oar handles. The blades come back to the mast, approximately, and are lashed to the lifting handles in this way: a line, permanently fixed to the handle, is taken round the blade, back round the handle, and then towards the king plank, where its soft eye engages the hook in a shock cord whose mid point is fixed to the king plank (to prevent loss overboard) and whose other end engages the other lashing line eye. Without the bowsprit the length of the oars may bring the blades to the side deck, but then cruising crews aren't meant to sit on side decks, are they?

Mention of a bowsprit on a dinghy (actually a Heron) may provoke interest from other members with under-canvassed boats wishing to make better speed in light winds. Significant points about mine are as follows:

1) The spar itself is 2" x 1" section softwood, 40" long overall (25" outboard, 15” sitting on the foredeck). It tapers from 2" wide to 1¼" at its forward end.

2) Thrust (almost the only normal stress) is taken by a block shaped to fit the stern and then glued and screwed to the under surface.

3) Upper and lower eyes (for forestay and bobstay) are through-bolted to each other - this is important if you want the mast to stay up!

4) The butt end is screwed (2" x No 10 cs) to a block beneath the king plank. This is better than the usual fitting which clutters the deck.

5) My jib tack fitting is an inverted T section heavy brass piece (through-bolted, of course). This is tapped and threaded (¼" Whit) to take bolts (passing right through the bowsprit) which hold down two more eyes, for an inner forestay and staysail, if you want a cutter rig.

6) The underside of the bowsprit is grooved to take the jib tack fitting on the foredeck.

7) The bobstay is ⅜” dia. terylene, shackled down to an eyebolt (inside the brass stem strip) passing through the stem, apron and knee. This bolt was made up from s.s. rod threaded at one end and bent to give a ¼" I D eye to receive the shackle pin. This eyebolt is invaluable for hauling the boat on to its trailer, now I've given up dunking the bearings in seawater.

The undercanvassed Heron is now overcanvassed! The bowsprit carries a 27 square foot jib in front of the standard 19 sq. foot staysail, and I have acquired a Solo mainsail (70 sq. feet compared with the standard Heron at 50 sq. feet) giving me 116 sq. feet all plain sail, which is invaluable when the wind is too light to produce "half-speed". I have never raced, and therefore like to be able to reduce sail; as the wind freshens, I drop the jib first (it is set flying, so I am able to pull most of the sail back over the foredeck). With still more wind, I jiffy-reef a 2' 6" slab, or even a second slab the same size; these slabs were calculated to reduce the Sole mainsail first to the size of the standard Heron main, and then to the reefed Heron main which had served me well for ten years.

This doesn't give me the fastest Heron afloat, but it does offset the slowness of a rather heavy cruising boat. An unlooked-for advantage of the fully-battened Solo sail is the absence of flogging when lying head to wind. The battens also necessitate slab-reefing instead of rolling round the boom, but experience shows that this is a further advantage.

And while I was altering the rig, I made a 16 foot Bermuda mast so that I could fly a polythene spinnaker (120 square feet) for ghosting conditions.

David I Fraser