by John C. Harris on Sat Aug 28, 2010 10:26 pm
If I thought it'd be a tiny bit faster, I'd be all for it, because slow sailboats are Evil. But I don't think it'd be an improvement. You match rigs to hulls the way you match engines to a chassis. You'd have to change a dozen other things, none of them trivial, to make a tall mainsail actually faster than the carefully proportioned gaff rig.
One thing I'm going to do on my boat eventually is to build an ultra-light gaff. The stock one is just right for rugged use, but after 30 months of sailing the boat I'm thinking about disguising a carbon fiber gaff with wood veneer and going for 1/3rd the weight. You'd feel it in puffy conditions.