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A gaff-rig mainsail is a quadrilateral sail whose head is supported by a gaff. A spritsail-rig mainsail is a quadrilateral sail whose aft head is supported by a sprit. A lug sail is an asymmetric quadrilateral sail suspended on a spar and hoisted up the mast as a fore-and-aft sail.
Bitts are paired vertical wooden or metal posts mounted either aboard a ship or on a wharf, pier, or quay. The posts are used to secure mooring lines, ropes, hawsers, or cables. [1] Bitts aboard wooden sailing ships (sometime called cable-bitts) were large vertical timbers mortised into the keel and used as the anchor cable attachment point. [2]
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.
A fore-and-aft topsail may be carried above the upper or only spanker, and is called the gaff sail. To stop a full-rigged ship, except when running directly down wind, the sails of the foremast are oriented in the direction perpendicular to those of the mainmast. Thus, the masts cancel out of their push on the ship. [5]
The length of chain running diagonally up and right from the bottom-left of this picture to the upper of the two yards is the fore-lower-topsail sheet. Some of the lines on Prince William's larger sails are made of chain to handle the heavy loads while remaining flexible enough to pass through the various blocks on their route to the deck.
The gaff rig has been largely superseded by the Bermuda rig, which has no topsails. On a gaff-rigged sailing boat, topsails may take a few different forms: A jib-headed topsail is generally a triangular sail set between the gaff and the top of the mast or topmast. A gaff-rigged vessel might have a gaff topsail above any or all of its gaff sails ...
The length of these fids is typically 21 or 22 times the diameter of rope to be spliced. A one-half-inch (12.7 mm) diameter rope would have any accompanying fid 10.5–11 in (266.7–279.4 mm) in length with hash-marks denoting the long and short fid measurements. A short fid is 1 ⁄ 3 a fid length and a long fid is 2 ⁄ 3 the overall fid length.
On smaller, merchant, sailing ships, it is commonly attached to the bowsprit by a cap and a saddle, either lashed down or secured with a crupper chain. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] Alternatively, it can be attached by a boom iron and a cap, or even by two boom irons. [ 3 ]