What is the rig on Blue Gold (formerly White Gull)?

I like perusing yacht sites selling boats to get an idea of something I can buy for my family in the near future, and I usually end off each session by glancing at the mega yachts for sale to see how the other half lives! I recently saw a 160' yacht by name of Blue Gold that had a confusing rig I've never seen before - at least on modern boats. A list of large yachts currently on the internet has her listed as a 'flybridge staysail auxiliary ketch'. What is this? I mean, I've never seen a ketch where the foremast didn't have a boom/mainsail configuration. And why would you choose this over a traditional ketch rig? I can see where you can probably get more square footage of sail up between the two masts, but surely this is only an advantage when you're sailing across the wind?

http://www.4yacht.com/en/component/content/article/237-yachts-for-sale-benetti.html

Hi again,
Okay, I'm still a bit confused. The two other yachts you showed both had booms on the main mast, so they're essentially traditional staysail ketches. So what variant would you call Blue Gold without the boom, or is she simply just a yacht outside the box where convention is concerned? As I mentioned, I've never seen a ketch before that didn't have a boom on the foremast.

Reflecting your own interest in Blue Gold (White Gull) I kind of feel sorry for the boat. She seems an interesting yacht for her time and probably helped lay the groundwork, I would guess, for the bigger yachts that came along after her from the likes of Perini Navi, but these days her lines and layout look a bit creaky and she's had a patchy history in recent years, culminating in her coming adrift from her moorings during a hurricane in the Sth. Pacific a couple of years ago and suffering some hull damage as a result. Over the last couple of years her asking price has been dropping quicker than shares in Radioshack, starting at around 19 million and incrementing down and down until last I saw she was going for just under 4 million. According to the literature she's in desperate need of a major refit (go figure) from the bottom up, and I hope whoever eventually buys her has the grease and the motivation to give the yacht the TLC she so obviously needs.

Curiously, given your own point about more modern sailing rigs and furling systems, I wonder if a new owner refitting the boat would consider installing a new foremast/boom configuration in line with more modern designs?

Oh really? Yeah, I've picked up bits and pieces that she was a pain to deal with sail-wise and needed quite a few hands on deck as a result, but of course given her age that may well have been before more modern furling systems came along so maybe she's easier to deal with on that score now. As you say though, given her age and all, the unusual rig that would cost a great deal to reconfigure, plus the checkered history, added together it might go some way to explaining why she's had no buyers and why the price has dropped so dramatically.

I'd still be interested to get an answer on her peculiar rig, because as I mentioned, I've never seen it in use before. It was actually while I was clicking around on the net, trying to find out about the rig, that I started picking up details here and there on Blue Gold's background - but nothing about her sail setup! If you look at the bottom picture of Fishtigua's set, now that makes sense to me - the sail setup is almost identical to Blue Gold's, except that the orientation of the two central sails is mirrored, with a main in place on a foremast boom. I'm no expert on the matter, but to me that gives the same area of sail, with what I would think are upwind/downwind advantages. Am I wrong?

@AMG. I saw that myself, but I figured that it's only going to come into its own in a fairly narrow corridor, and that the sail in question would throw up a pretty hefty and disruptive wind shadow on the genoa, given their near identical shapes, and that overall the more conventional approach with a boom would offer greater flexibility over a wider range of wind direction. The experts on here would know more on the matter than I do. Have to admit though, she does look nice in that shot - first picture I've seen of the boat with the all white hull from her earlier days. Suits the boat better I think.

I'll ask it one final time though - is there an actual name for this type of boom-less configuration on the main mast?

@K1w1. It's funny you should say that. At one point I thought I'd seen pictures of the yacht set up as a schooner, but when I tried finding the pictures again I figured I must have confused it with another vessel.

@Davidwb. Last report she was based in Vanuatu and still for sale - the way the price is going down they'll probably be offering her for free soon, plus a set of steak knives! Here's the article from a year ago regarding the damage she suffered in the cyclone -

Vt1 billion damage | Vanuatu Daily Post

@AMG. Okay, maybe this is where the confusion is coming in, because as I said earlier, I thought I'd seen pictures of the boat in what looked like a schooner setup. Would explain why I haven't been able to get anywhere researching the rig on the net, because since this came up, I've been keying in searches under 'ketch' as per her listing here -

List of large sailing yachts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Have to go and look under 'schooner' now to see if I can now find a matching rig on another boat just to satisfy my curiosity. Thanks for the clarification.

@K1w1. That might have been when the Dutch owner had her stern extended to accommodate a 6 meter RIB he wanted to keep on the yacht.