The Book of the Sailboat: How to rig, sail and handle small boats

by A. Hyatt Verrill

Just as the little catboat has its stays, halyards and sheet, so the huge, towering ship has its stays and shrouds, sheets and halyards and the use of each is exactly the same as on the catboat with its single sail. The stays or shrouds always hold the masts in position and strengthen them. There are backstays, forestays and bobstays on every vessel, and each is designated by the proper prefix of fore, main or mizzen, top, topgallant, royal, etc.

The halyards are to hoist the sails and they take their names from the sails to which they are attached. The sheets are used to haul the sails flat and tight and they extend from the corners of the sails to the tips of the yards, but in addition there are many parts of the rigging which have no counterpart on fore-and-aft-rigged vessels. For example, the braces are used to swing or set the yards in various positions, the clewlines are used to gather up the sails ready for furling and there are buntlines, garnet-lines and many other lines which are only used on square-riggers and are of little interest, unless you expect to use a square rig or are interested in all things pertaining to sailing craft.

It may sound foolish to speak of using a square rig, but one can have a lot of fun and can learn a great deal about ships and sailing by fitting up a small boat as a brig, bark, or ship. I once had a twenty-foot sharpie rigged as a miniature full-rigged ship. Of course there is no practical advantage in this, for the square rigs require a great deal of care, they do not sail as well as fore-and-aft rigs when tacking to windward, and they should never be used, save as a means of recreation and for sailing on smooth waters, on a small boat.

As to which is the best fore-and-aft rig to use on small boats there is a great diversity of opinion, for every boat sailor has his own ideas and his own favorite rig and what may prove very satisfactory to one person may not be at all satisfactory to another.

The best method to follow in determining your rig is to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each, adopt the one you think best suited to your special requirements and your boat and if this doesn’t fulfill expectations try another. No two boats, even of the same model, sail just alike and often one rig will give far better results on one type of boat than on another while the character of the waters sailed, the prevalent winds, the size of the boat, its form, the purpose for which it is used and many other factors must be considered when deciding upon a rig.

If you are a beginner and your boat is small and open, a leg-o’-mutton or gunter sail will probably be as good as any, whereas if your boat is very stable or heavy, or if you sail where there are light winds, a lug, sprit or boom-and-gaff sail will be better.

It is a great mistake to place too much sail on a boat for nothing is gained by it and the dangers of sailing are vastly increased. Too much sail on a boat will invariably and inevitably result in one of three things. If the boat is not wonderfully stable she will capsize, or will lean over until she swamps; if so heavy or stable that she still stands up, the wind will rip the sail or tear out the masts and if neither of these casualties occur she will simply “drag” sail and will handle badly. Every boat will sail to the very best advantage with a definite amount of sail and the amount will vary according to the breeze. Hence it is no economy to carry on with all sail in a heavy wind, for if the sail used is adapted to the boat for light winds it stands to reason it will be far too much in heavy weather.

Flat-bottomed boats are usually very safe if properly handled and not provided with too much sail, but owing to their shape they capsize very quickly once they are tipped a trifle too far. For this reason leg-o’-mutton or gunter sails should be selected for this type of boat, partly because they offer a small area to the wind near their tops and because they have the quality of “spilling” the wind when at an angle and thus preventing the boat from being tipped dangerously. A flat-bottomed boat may be sailed in perfect safety with these sails when lug or boom-and-gaff sails of the same area would be extremely dangerous.

Another matter to remember is that a greater amount of sail may be safely carried as two or more sails than would be possible in a single sail, but for boats less than twenty feet over all a multiplicity of sails is a nuisance. The question of just how much sail should be carried is a very difficult one to answer, for boats vary in their stability and a great deal depends upon how they are handled and the skill of the sailor. For ordinary open boats used for pleasure where a single sail is carried, the sail area should not greatly exceed one and one-half times the number of square feet obtained by multiplying the boat’s length by its extreme breadth. Thus a boat twenty feet long by five feet wide could safely carry one hundred and fifty square feet of canvas, but for safety this should be as low as possible. A sail fifteen feet high and seven feet wide might upset the boat before it would drive it along and yet a sail ten feet high and twelve feet wide might serve to sail the boat very well and without any danger of capsizing. At any rate, until you are thoroughly familiar with handling your boat and with the rudiments of sailing under all conditions, you should confine yourself to a small amount of sail and should make haste slowly.

In addition to the fore-and-aft sails described there are many which are combinations, adaptations or improvements and which are known by different names. Among these are the French gunter in which the upper portion of the mast not only slides on the lower part but may be lowered like a gaff as well; the leg-o’-mutton with a boom at the lower edge in place of the sprit; the various battened sails which are really lugsails fitted with light wooden strips, or battens, across them to keep the sails flatter and to make reefing easier; the old-fashioned lugsails which have no spar or boom at the lower edge; the settee sails which have a boom and a much curved and very long upper yard like a lateen, and finally the Bermuda sails which are different from all.