When I started sailing, I never actually knew the different types of sails and uses there were. It’s kind of embarrassing but I figure there might be others wondering the same thing. Because after all, what’s this (see image below)?!
If you know what kind of sail that is, then this post may not be for you. However, if you don’t, keep reading.
There are a lot of different types of sails: the mainsail, the jib, genoa, spinnaker, gennaker, screecher, drifter, windseeker, trysail, storm jib.. is your head spinning yet? Let’s just look at some pictures now.
Sail Types
First off, there are three mainsail types: the mainsail which is the main one, the head sail which is at the front, and there’s also usually some sort of specialty sail that most sailors carry. In the example below, this would be the spinnaker.
How Does a Sail Work?
The sail has a head which is the top, and the foot which is the bottom. Next you have the tack which is the lower front corner which is attached to the boom. You also have the luff which is the front, and the leech which is the back. The clew is just ‘sailor talk’ for corners.
Sail Plan
Sailing always starts with a sail plan. The sail plan is a diagram made up of three components. The mast configuration, the sail type, and the rig type.
The mast configuration is just made up of how many masts your boat has and where they are placed. I won’t really go into this though because most boats only have a single mast.
Next you have a sail type which is just your sail shapes and functionality.
The rig type just refers to the way the sails are setup on your boat. There’s an infinite amount of sail configurations. You could have more headsails, you could have more mainsails, etc. The most common type of configuration is the Bermuda Sloop and will talk more about that below.
Sail Shape
Roughly speaking you have two shapes, square rigged and front-and-aft rigged (which means from front to back). The left ship is the Alexander von Humboldt ship; a great, great ship that looks absolutely gorgeous I think.
Types of Rig
Next is the types of rig. The three most common rig types are:
Lateen Rigged: This is kind of old-school. It has a three-sided mainsail set on a long yard and runs from front to back.
Gaff Rigged: Features a four sided mainsail. The bolt at the head is called the gaff. Hence the name, gaff rigged.
Bermuda Rigged: This is on the Bermuda sloop which has a 3 side mainsail.
Bermuda Sloop Rig
The Bermuda Sloop Rig is the most common sail configuration. If you want to see other types of configurations, make sure to check out more in beginner guides
The Bermuda Sloop rig is masted with two sails and front-and-aft-rigged with a triangular shape. It uses a mainsail and the jib as a head sail, which is remembered as the sail at the front.
The jib is there to improve handling, and increase sail area from the one mast in order to increase sail speed and maneuvering ability.
The jib also gives you control of the bow of the boat and the mainsail gives you control over the stern of the boat. Therefore, both of them combined give you exceptional maneuverability. This is why most boats are front-and-aft rigged now and not square rigged. The square rigged is medieval in many ways.
Therefore, if you have a choice, the square-rigged looks very cool but is very difficult, you’ll need a big crew. The Bermuda sloop is just so easy to handle, you can sail them on your own.
Genoa
The genoa, which was originally called the overlapping jib (easy to see why). The genoa always overlaps, which give more speed in light winds
The size of the genoa is usually indicated by a percentage which represents how far past the mast the foot goes. For example, the foot on a 150% genoa will go 50% past the mast.
Specialty Sails
The specialty sails can be divided into three categories roughly: downwind sails, light air (or reachers), and storm sails (which are tiny sails for heavy winds).
Generally speaking, you’ll want big sails for light air and small sails for strong winds, obviously. Specialty sails will help to improve speed, handling, and performance for special conditions.
Spinnaker
For example, the reason we have specialty sails for downwinds is because the front-and-aft rig catches less wind so you will miss out on speed. The square rigged boats would be much faster downwind. We offset this by using a spinnaker (big balloon sail). Spinnakers are the most common specialty sail, and look like a kite while usually having bright colors. I’m always happy to see them, they are just a joy to see. They are the the largest downwind sail and great for trade wind routes. For example, if you have the tradewinds in your back and you put up the spinnaker you will gain a lot of speed.
As you can see also, the spinnaker is attached to a special pole. Therefore, you’ll need special rigging which can be quite expensive.
Gennaker
For smaller boats you can use a gennaker which is a spinnaker without the pole, without the special rigging. As you can see it’s just hanging by cables and basically a cross between a genoa and a spinnaker. Also, this sail has many names so you may hear it being referred to as a cruising spinnaker, cruising chute, pole-less spinnaker, and the SpinDrifer.
Code Zero
The next is pretty popular among racers. The Code Zero sail is a very, very large genoa (you can see it on the left), and overlaps the mast a ton. I believe it’s like 200% the size of a regular jib, and is the cross between a gennaker and a spinnaker. However, it’s much flatter so it’s not the balloon shape and better for close-reaching which is better for faster speeds and maneuvering.
Stormsails
The last ones are the stormsails, so the trysail and the storm jib.
The trysail is actually a mainsail replacement for storms. The reason you want a small sail during a storm is because you’ll lose control of your boat otherwise.
The storm jib at the front is just a small, triangular head sail that you can run with very heavy winds. At the moment, ISAF wants you to have a full orange storm jib.
Why Use All These Different Sails?
Again, different conditions and different wind speeds will call for different tactics. You could use all kinds of airsails (or reachers), you could use all kinds of down sails like the spinnaker, and they come in all different sizes and shapes. However, if you want to know more about how to use them and when to use them, and at what speed, I have a very detailed table below.
Overview of Uses for Sails
Learn About Different Rig Types
I hope you enjoyed this and were able to learn more about different types of sails and uses. If you want to know some more about the different rig types, contact me or leave a comment below and I will put together another post if there’s enough interest.