In One Metres we have three rigs – big, medium and small. Easy to get your head around ! In Marbleheads, there seem to be …loads of them. If you are buying a used boat, simply take what’s on offer and get going. If you are buying a new boat, what do you do?

Wise people in the Fleet say:-

• for Club racing, have three rigs (A, B and C) and that will be fine
• For racing Open Meetings maybe four
• For National and International, maybe five

In the current times, the fashion seems to be that A is a swing rig (just starting with the class? don’t worry…), and then B and C’ smaller rigs are conventional rigs. So really …big, medium, small just like the IOMs…. What else is there?

Well, you can get C2 and C3, which are based on the C rig geometry and C2 and C3 have progressively lower rig heights for windier days. You can, from some sail makers, also get B2, B3 which are based on the B rig but with progressively lower rig heights. Plus I’m told that B2 is even smaller than C3…. At least, I think that’s it!! Head spinning???!! Don’t worry!!

There is quite a good explanation here:-

http://www.docplayer.net/21859555-Choosing-Rigs-for-Marblehead-Class-Yachts.html

Hilariously, I always tell people that our club has 80-90% of its race days at 12mph breeze and below. So a sail wardrobe of A,B & C will be fine.

As I write (July 2023), the last four sundays have had enough breeze to blow your head off. Probably C3 days… all of them… Terribly exciting with Marbleheads. Anyway, you can only be wrong!! For myself, I’ve decided to start on A,B,C.

For the F6, we get our rigs from here, Red Ant Yachts. They supply A,B,C,C2,C3 :-

http://www.redantradioyachts.com/sails-and-rigs

If you are in UK, there is a UK Red Ant distributor in the shape of the fabulous K7yachts.