#Sails

[itsninex]

( x )

[ltwilliammowett]

Rig guide

[chasingrainbowsforever]

~ Gold and Gray ~

[illustratus]

Sailing Ship at Sea (detail) by Michael Zeno Diemer

[kafkasapartment]

Mariette, 2000. Michael Kahn. Pigment print.

[portrait-paintings]

Woman with a Fan (Portrait of Maude Bouvier)

Artist: Albert Herter (American, 1871 - 1950)

Date: c. 1895

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA, United States

[saltlifehippie]

[coiour-my-world]

Scarlet Sails || Daniel Kordan

[photozoi]

Greedy Gustifer does his best sailboat impersonation

[artstudents-things]

Mending the sail

Joaquín Sorolla, 1896

Oil on canvas, 220 x 302 cm, Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna, Venezia, Italy

[yorksnapshots]

Holgate Windmill, York, England.

York's last surviving windmill and the oldest 5-sailed windmill in the country. Originally built circa 1769.

[ltwilliammowett]

Most common sails

Square sail

The square sail is the oldest known sail. The Egyptians and Phoenicians were already familiar with it and the Vikings also used this type of sail. It has the shape of a square and is attached to a yard that is pulled up in the middle of the mast. This way the sail is perpendicular to the ship. Square sails need the wind in the direction of the course (diagonally from aft)

Lateen sail

The lateen sail has been known in Arab countries since the 1st century AD, and since the 8th century it has been the most common form of sail in the Mediterranean. It usually has a triangular shape, is sometimes also slightly trapezoidal and is attached to an inclined yard. This is almost twice the length of the mast. the latin sail can be longer than the ship itself. it was the first for and aft sail, i.e. a sail whose normal position is the longitudinal direction of the ship.

Lug sail

The origin of the lugsail is unknown. It has the shape of a square staysail, i.e. it is set lengthwise to the ship on a rather steeply set round timber. This in turn is offset to the side, loosely attached to the mast and considerably shorter than the lateen sail. The lugsail only needs one line to pull it up. It has proved to be particularly useful for dinghies, as it is uncomplicated and can be passed around the mast without having to haul in the sail first when tacking.

Gaff sail

Gaff rig is a sailing rig (configuration of sails, mast and stays) in which the sail is four-cornered, fore-and-aft rigged, controlled at its peak and, usually, its entire head by a spar (pole) called the gaff. Because of the size and shape of the sail, a gaff rig will have running backstays rather than permanent backstays. The gaff enables a fore-and-aft sail to be four sided, rather than triangular. A gaff rig typically carries 25 percent more sail than an equivalent Bermuda rig for a given hull design. A sail hoisted from a gaff is called a gaff-rigged (or, less commonly, gaff rigged or gaffrigged) sail.

Staysail

A staysail ("stays'l") is a fore-and-aft rigged sail whose luff can be affixed to a stay running forward (and most often but not always downwards) from a mast to the deck, the bowsprit, or to another mast. Most staysails are triangular; however, some are four-cornered. In square rigged ships the staysails can help in tacking, overcoming the lumbering square sails' tendency to prevent bearing up to windward, especially in light winds. Where a ship attempts to tack but fails and has to bear away again on the original tack, she is said to have missed her stays. In cutter rigged yachts the genoa will often need to be furled before changing tack due to the difficulty in passing the big sail between the two forestays. Here the staysail can help bring the bow through the wind more effectively.

In addition to providing more overall sailing force, a staysail can be used to modify a ship's sail plan to be more efficient in different types of weather. For example, in high winds a captain might reef a headsail, but that impacts the sail shape and can result in slower ship speed. Instead, the headsail could be furled entirely and a staysail used instead, resulting in higher ship speed.

[chasingrainbowsforever]

~ Sailing ~

[illustratus]

A 16-gun brig at anchor in the Cove of Cork by Thomas Yates