With the object of familiarizing the reader with the names of those portions of her rigging common to nearly all boats, we have already, in Chapter I., given a slight description of a cutter. We will now enter upon a more detailed explanation of this rig as applied to craft of under ten tons.
A cutter’s bowsprit is not a fixture, as it is on the small boats we have so far described, but is made to slide in and out. It can be run in altogether when no jib is set; and when the large jib—for a cutter should be provided with two jibs at least—is shifted in a breeze for the smaller jib, the bowsprit can be partly run in. It is a great relief to a vessel plunging into a heavy sea thus to relieve her of this overhanging weight.
The bowsprit passes between strong wooden bits on the deck and through an iron ring covered with leather, bolted on the stem, called the gammon iron. When the bowsprit has been run in to the required distance it is kept in its place by the fid, an iron bolt which passes through the bowsprit and the bits.
It is essential that a bowsprit run in easily without jamming, so the gammon iron should be made large, and the fid should be a stout one, else the pressure of the bowsprit will soon bend it, and it will be impossible to draw it out.
When the bowsprit is reefed, the bobstay and the bowsprit shrouds have also to be shortened and tautened up with the tackle attached to them.
The tack of the jib hooks on to an iron traveller on the bowsprit which is hauled out to the required distance with the jib outhaul.
The backstays or runners (see ([Fig. 1]), support the mast when the vessel is running before the wind. The lee runner must be always slacked out, so that the boom can run out sufficiently far.
Most of a cutter’s halyards consist of systems of pulleys giving more or less mechanical advantage as the sail is large or small; but it must be remembered that the more powerful the purchase employed, the longer the time occupied in hoisting and lowering the sail and the greater the friction and chance of the halyard jamming, so a purchase that will just enable one hand to hoist a sail with moderate ease is all that is necessary. Small yachts are often over blocked.
For example, a cutter’s throat halyards generally consist of a luff-tackle purchase, the double block on the mast and a single one on the throat; but in a very small cutter a gun-tackle purchase of two single blocks (see ([Fig. 33]) will suffice.