The original 121/2 was gaff-rigged. It waS meant, among other things, to be a school for bigger racing boats, all of which then Had gaff rigs. Sometime in the 1920s it was offered with a jib-headed rig for the same reason. I understand that the jib-headed Boats sailed exactly even with the gaff boats, so that clubs like Beverly or Sippi'can, which had both, started them all together as one class. Later still, the Herresheff Company brought out another version with a wishbone boom, but this one didn't take. Wishbone booms are frustrating in boats that have shrouds set up well abaft the mast to do duty as backstays. Off the wind, the lee arm of the wishbone lands 6n the lee shroud long before the sail is squared out.

I adopted the jib-headed rig for this proposal because its rigging is a little simpler, and because most people now ,think a gaff is an affectation. I have no, strong feelings one way or the other myself, aside from irritation at the falsity of most objections to the gaff. I do notice that it's getting difficult and expensive to _buy sail track (a Herreshoff invention, by the way) for wooden masts, and would think that a point in favor of the gaff rig, unless I planned to buy a slotted metal mast.

Incidentally, I haven't made any attempt to make the rig here coincide exactly with the 12 1/2 rig, but it should be possible to buy complete, off-the-shelf sets of Bullseye* spars, sails, and rigging. It might be worth looking into. All these boats are about as simple and cheap to rig as possible if you want a sloop.

Note: *Buliseye rigging is available through the Cape Cod SbJpbuilding Co., PO Box 152, Wareham, MA 02571. _Rhone: (617) 295-3550.

Economies of Production

The 12 1/f2 was intended to be cheap to produce in the first place. The original batch of 19 boats, in 1914, cost $420 each, which was extortion and upwards of twice what they would have cost from highly respectable builders -elsewhere. The Herreshoffs had worked into a position from which they could sell their boats to people who either didn't care what they cost or actually valued a high price for its own sake as a status symbol. Nice work if you can get it, but the Herreshoffs also had an expensive plant to maintain and tricky problems of production continuity. I think they took the chance given by the order for the 12 1/2 fleet to develop a stock boat, something that would be economical to build on speculation and that would smooth out the spurts and slacks of custom work. Hence the simple rig and, for Herreshoff, a simple hull. It would have been business suicide for Herreshoff to put out a production boat that looked crude in any respect, but he had the tooling and the experienced craftsmen to economically build apparently expensive features, like the hollow garboards and the characteristic molded sheer strake. The inherent economies in the proportions and arrangement of the boat could be sold with a "less is more" argument.

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