Gaff rig

Reliance, a competitor in the 1903 America's Cup and the largest gaff rigged cutter ever built
A gaff rigged sail and its surrounding spars
Gaff sail - ①Mast ②Gaff ③Peak ④Throat ⑤Boom ⑥Clew ⑦Tack ⑧Saddle ⑨Parrel ⑩Sall ⑪Bridle ⑫Peak Halyard ⑬Throat Halyard

Gaff rig[1] 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.[2]

A sail hoisted from a gaff is called a gaff-rigged (or, less commonly, gaff rigged or gaffrigged) sail.[3]

  1. ^ "The Gaff Rig Page". Archived from the original on December 3, 2008. Retrieved 2008-10-05.
  2. ^ Philips-Birt, Douglas (1954). Rigs and Rigging of Yachts. W&J Mackay & Co. Ltd. p. 176.
  3. ^ "N-gram comparison of 'gaff-rigged', 'gaff rigged', 'gaffrigged', 1900–2008". Google books Ngram Viewer. Google Inc. Retrieved 17 February 2013.

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