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Gaffelaar, by Johannes Christiaan Schotel

Gaff rig is a sailing rig (configuration of sails) in which a sail is a four-cornered fore-and-aft rigged item controlled at its peak and, usually, its entire head by a spar (pole) called the gaff. The gaff enables a fore and aft sail to be four sided, rather than triangular, and up to doubles the sail area that can be carried by that mast and boom (if a boom is used in the particular rig).

A sail hoisted from a gaff is called a gaff rigged sail. Any mast may carry a gaff rigged course sail.

Gaff rig remains the most popular rig for schooner and barquentine mainsails and other course sails, and spanker sails on a square rigged vessel are always gaff rigged. On other rigs, particularly the sloop, ketch and yawl, gaff rigged sails were once common but have now been largely replaced by the Bermuda rig sail.

On larger gaff rigged vessels the gaff is hoisted by two halyards:

Halyards (and edges) on a gaff rigged sail

• The throat or main halyard lifts the end closer to the mast and bears the main weight of the sail and the tension of the luff.
• The peak halyard lifts the end further from the mast, and bears the leech tension.

On such rigs a triangular fore-and-aft sail called a gaff topsail may be carried between the gaff and the top mast or the gaff and a jack yard.

On some smaller vessels the gaff is raised by a single halyard running on a wire gunter. On these rigs the gaff may be very nearly vertical and a topsail is never carried. Another variation on small vessels is a gaff with no halyard. One end of the spar is attached to the peak of the sail and the gaff is hoist until it tensions the head and leach and then the other end is secured to the mast near the tack.

• Gunter