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Starboot Gaffelrigg Die Yacht 4-94 Bild
Starboot Gaffelrigg Die Yacht 4-94 Artikel

In our detailed research about the starclass gaff rig, we did not find any reconstruction approach or project. The only documented refit of a starclass with a gaff rig we found was the project by Guy Ribadeau Dumas in 1993/1994.

The German Sailing Journal “Die Yacht” reported about the experiment in the 04/1994 issue. As it can be seen in the pictures of that article (see above and left) as well as in the picture of bluegreenpictures (see below) that the result is a beautiful finished and retro-classic looking craft - but - she has nothing in common with the classical sliding gunter rigged star of the first decades of the starclass. It can be seen, that Dumas rigged his star with a fore-stay sail and additionally a jib and a jib-boom.

The mainsail looks more like a classical gaff sail than a sliding gunter.

Dumas claimed that his retro-star was under most conditions faster than the star of today. This is most probably true and no surprise:

His retro-star carries with 42m² sail area about 14m² (i.e.50%!) more of sails than the original “sliding gunter rig” of the star. The old stars however had the same sail area as the later “low Marconi“ rig and the “tall Marconi” rig of today’s starclass.

Nevertheless it is obviously a lot of fun and a real challenge to drive this “monster” - and a motivation to launch and push our reconstruction project.

On the other hand, unfortunately, this project proved to be not very useful as example for the reconstruction of the original starclass sliding gunter rig.

Gaffel Star Ribadeau-Dumas