The gaff vang – what is it?

The gaff vang – what is it?

The gaff vang is a rope (yes, I said rope; get over it) connected to the end of a gaff that you can use to control how far to leeward (down-wind) the gaff can swing.

This rope might be sheeted (tightened) from the deck, yet to be best it ought to experience a square (pulley) higher up first. (On the off chance that you sheet it specifically from the deck, you are basically pulling down on the gaff instead of pulling the gaff closer to the centerline of the pontoon; this can benefit from outside intervention a little by pulling from the climate (upwind) side of the vessel, however a square higher up is considerably more proficient.)

On a boat or a ketch, the gaff vang piece might be mounted high up on the second pole (principle pole or mizzen pole, individually) to control the gaff of the sail straightforwardly before that pole. For sails on poles needing an alternate pole toward the back, the main helpful spot to hang the gaff vang square is high up on the running backstay.

Along these lines, what is a running backstay? It is a rope that stays (helps help) the pole from the back, however one you need to move from one side of the sail to the next when you switch from one tack to the next. (The running backstay will constantly need to be on the climate (upwind) side of the cruise, so when the sail needs to go from one side of the vessel to the next, the RBS needs to be brought down and exchanged.) (Many Bermuda-fixed vessels have standing (changeless) backstays, what as the Bermuda rig has no gaff that needs to swing here and there and then here again. Gaffers can't fix these.)

Setting running backstays used to be really regular on wooden vessels, however with cutting edge watercrafts (even current gaffers), the practice has blurred. Essentially, the current standing apparatus underpins the pole fine without the additional help. Indeed back in the past times, running backstays were frequently just fixed when the sail was relied upon to stay on one side of the pontoon for very much a while.

The two cruises that can most effortlessly be fixed for a gaff vang (read: without gear a running backstay) are a yacht's foresail and a ketch's mainsail. Cheerfully for me, the Centennial is a ketch, and I have been contemplating gaff vangs a lot.

Thus, what does it do, this gaff vang?

Actually, conceivably, the gaff (at the highest point of the sail) and the blast (at the bottom) ought to virtually line up with one another. (Some "turn" is required, on the grounds that wind higher up is blowing in a marginally distinctive heading, however very little — and not constantly.) The issue is that the best way to get these two competes to line up (missing a vang) is to force down on the blast — which could be unpredictable to draw off perfectly, and you need to draw really hard. Put just, with a gaff vang you can undoubtedly trim both competes to line up without overabundance strain on the blast's sheets.

Gaff rig

Description

Gaff rig remains the most popular rig for schooner and barquentine mainsails[citation needed] and other course sails, and spanker sails on a square rigged vessel are always gaff rigged. On other rigs, particularly the sloop, ketch and yawl, gaff rigged sails were once common but have now been largely replaced by the bermuda rig sail,[citation needed] which, in addition to being simpler than the gaff rig, usually allows boats to sail closer to the direction the wind is coming from.

The throat halyard lifts the end closer to the mast and bears the main weight of the sail and the tension of the luff. The peak halyard lifts the actual gaff, at some point along its length, and bears the leech tension. The peak halyard should approach the gaff at ~90 degrees. This angle provides maximum leech tension, and ensures that luff tension is not affected be any adjustment to the peak halyard. The peak halyard may be attached directly to the gaff (very short gaffs) though there is the potential for snapping the gaff at the point of attachment. More usually the attachment is split to at least two points along the length of the gaff by the "Gaff Span".

Additionally, a gaff vang may be fitted. It is a line attached to the end of the gaff which prevents the gaff from sagging downwind. Gaff vangs are difficult to rig on the aft-most sail, so are typically only found on schooners or ketches, and then only on the foresail or mainsail.A triangular fore-and-aft sail called a gaff topsail may be carried between the gaff and the topmast or the gaff and a jack-yard.Gunter-rigged boats are similar, smaller vessels on which a spar popularly but incorrectly called the gaff is raised until it is nearly vertical, parallel to the mast and close adjacent to it. 

More correctly the spar is called a yard, because historically the gunter rig is derived from lug rigs - where the spar from which the sail hangs is always called the yard - rather than from gaff rig; this is despite the similarity between a high peaked gaff rig and a gunter rig. On these rigs a topsail is never carried. Some gunter rigged boats use a single halyard to hoist the yard, but others use two; a throat halyard as in gaff rig, and a peak halyard running on a wire or rod gunter: one method of hoisting the latter type is to haul up the peak halyard first, so that the yard comes up to the mast but is not yet raised high enough vertically, then haul up the throat halyard, so that the yard slides upwards until the luff of the sail is taut. Reefing a gunter rigged boat with a single halyard requires the sail to be fully lowered into the boat and (usually) the halyard repositioned on the yard or (rarely) the sail to be moved downwards along the yard. 

However some gunter rigged boats, certainly amongst dinghies, have an additional halyard from the end of the yard, to hoist the sail once the yard is hoisted; these are still technically gunter rigged but have borrowed some of the characteristics of the bermudian rig; essentially the yard is hosted fully and then left in position and regarded as a semi-permanent topmast, with the sail raised up or down it as required. Another four-sided sail uses a spar with no halyard. One end of the spar, here called a sprit, is attached to the peak of the sail and the sprit is hoist until it tensions the head and leach and then the other end is secured to the mast near the tack with a Snotter. Such a rig is called Spritsails rig, and is considered a totally different rig.

Gaff rig

Gaff rig is a sailing rig (configuration of sails) 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. The gaff enables a fore and aft sail to be four sided, rather than triangular, and as much as doubles the sail area that can be carried by that mast and boom (if a boom is used in the particular rig). Additionally, for any given area of sail, the gaff rig will have a lower heeling moment than a triangular sail.

A sail hoisted from a gaff is called a gaffrigged sail.

Standing the Gaff

The rowdy adolescence of baseball, told by the game’s first autobiographical umpire.

Harry "Steamboat" Johnson brought to early baseball great integrity and a pugnacious stlye. Toughness--being able to "stand the gaff"--was essential during his long career as an umpire. From 1909 to 1935 Johnson umpired in exhibition games and minor leagues (except for the 1914 season in the National League) from Los Angeles to Toronto. When fans screamed "Kill the umpire!" he responded he'd rather die on a baseball field than anywhere else.

With disarming directness and humor, Steamboat Johnson tells what it was like umpiring for various leagues (the wild Western was nick-named "101 Ranch"), being on the road (lonely because umpires could not fraternize with players), and getting inot all sorts of jams (he once took on Ty Cobb in a 1922 exhibition game between the Detroit Tigers and the St. Louis Cardinals). "Standing the gaff" meant surviving the wrath of players-and of fans, who hurled insults and pop bottles. After a game, Steamboat would be escorted to his hotel by the police. Johnson instructs would-be umpires, answers questions from fans, and names the best players he ever saw.

Until now, Standing the Gaff, originally published in 1935, has been hard to find. This edition makes it available to buffs and social historians and those curious about baseball in its rowdy adolescence. In a new introduction, Larry R. Gerlach tells more about Steamboat's life. He is a professor of history at the University of Utah and the author of The Men in Blue: Conversations with Umpires.


“Legendary minor league umpire Harry “Steamboat” Johnson’s autobiography, Standing the Gaff, was published in 1935. The legend is that he would stand outside the ballpark selling copies to fans before the game; then during the game, when he made a bad call, they would literally throw his book at him. He didn’t care--he’d pick up the books and after the game sell them all over again.”--Ken Kaiser, author of Planet of the Umps

http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Standing-the-Gaff,2232.aspx