Originally Posted by
Dobbs
Since I work on modern sailboats, like to try and figure out how crews would have handled the ships in our game.
With a gaff rigged fore and aft boat, the gaff boom ends at the mast. When tacking, the helmsman turns the boat, and the wind moves from blowing over the port bow to over the starboard bow. Since the xebec's booms extend past the mast, unless the front of the boom is "dipped" behind the mast, the sail back winds against the mast. The boat can be sailed like this but it is not as efficient. I suspect that a xebec captain would prefer to sail with all of his booms on the leeward sides of the masts for better sail shape. The exception is when sailing directly downwind, at which point, the captain would want to swing the foresail to the other side to run wing and wing. He could choose to just swing the boom across, but the sail would be behind the mast. The alternative would be to dip the forward end of the boom behind the mast. Until this morning, I had thought that dipping a yard while sailing downwind would be too difficult, but then I realized that, as the xebec turns farther downwind, there's a point when the main blocks the foresail, and it collapses. That's where the crew could dip the sail. Of course if the captain then decides he wants to wear/jibe the xebec, I have no idea how he could dip the main, since at no point during the jibe does it not have wind filling it. It could be that the main couldn't be dipped on the new track until the boat went upwind, or maybe the sail could be eased out during the jibe until the peak was pointing toward the bow, at which point it could be dipped.
I wonder if anyone has posted footage of dhows sailing. The mechanics should be the same.