SAILING AN AERO RIG

STEVE BROWN bought Novara second-hand and has sailed her extensively in the high latitudes where her ability to weather a storm by weathercocking the sails to the wind was a definite advantage when shothanded in unpleasant conditions.

It was Armin Fischer, then skipper of the 100-year-old Fife Classic Sumurun that first coined the phrase the ‘wobbly rig’ when I spoke to him on the dock at Wayfarer Marine in Camden, Maine. Armin had sailed a singlemasted AeroRig across the Atlantic and was explaining how it had taken the crew some time to get used to the movement of the rig at the masthead.

I had just bought the AeroRig schooner, , so had two ‘wobbly rigs’ and other