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.
