At first glance, junk sails and sprit sails seem archaic, but in many respects they are surprisingly modern in design. Why both types of rigging continue to fascinate to this day in terms of simplicity, reefing and handling.
The Chinese lugger sail, which is still used in various forms on junks and other working vessels in China, but also on a whole range of modern European yachts, is a special type of balanced lugger sail. Often somewhat inaccurately referred to as a junk sail, it comes in at least as many different forms and designs as the European gaff sail. In principle, it is a balanced lugger sail with full-length battens. However, these are not its defining feature. Continuous battens were, and still are, also found on European sails, such as the steep-gaff sails of older racing dinghies.
- Read more about this in YACHT: a profile of a yacht with Junk rig, the story of a homemade—Junk and a look at the The Theory of Shape in Sail Physics.
Why the sheet-handling system is so clever
The be-all and end-all of junk sailing is the ingenious sheet system. The sheet branches out into a sort of multi-part adjustable Hahnepot; a branch of this Hahnepot – in other words, a partial sheet – leads to each batten.
This system has several advantages. Because the battens divide the sail into numerous small panels, each held in place by its own partial sheet, the sail can be made from fairly light – and therefore inexpensive – fabric, as the tension across the entire surface is not concentrated at the clew or at any other point on the sail. The tensile forces are therefore low throughout. Other advantages shared by all battened sails are well known: the sail always retains its ‘built-in’ shape, it never flattens, and consequently lasts longer.
The main advantage of the Chinese rig, however, lies in the sheet system: reefing is child’s play. The sail is simply eased off as the wind strength requires. A halyard can help with this, but isn’t essential, as when the halyard is eased, the sheets automatically slacken; this causes the sail to turn out of the wind, making it all the easier to lower. The reefed section of the sail settles, with the lower battens, into the fitted reefing loops and remains there without needing to be secured with reefing lines or in any other way.
This is, of course, because the upper, unreefed part of the sail is held in place by its own partial sheets and therefore cannot flap out and pull the reefed section up with it. However, this would be the case with any other sail if the unreefed part were not secured by a clew hook, a luff line and reefing lines, or wound around the boom using a furling system.
A high degree of control with minimal effort
Most junk sails are flown on strong, unshrouded masts, so they can easily be trimmed across the ship and even further in, which is very practical in the event of sudden gusts or to slow the boat down.
Most people with practical experience of the Chinese lugger sail agree that a boat with a junk rig is inferior to a fully-rigged sloop in light winds and when sailing close to the wind, but is otherwise on a par with it – whilst being much easier to handle. Modern furling headsail and furling mainsail systems do offer the same advantage, but at disproportionately higher purchase and maintenance costs.
Spinnaker: simple, affordable, effective
In its basic form, the Sprietsegel is very simple. It is square and is held open by a diagonal pole, the ‘Spriet’. Anyone who speaks Low German knows that the word has nothing to do with spirit, schnapps or petrol, but corresponds to the High German ‘Spreize’. It should therefore be spelled with an ‘ie’ and not ‘Spritsegel’.
The sprit sail can be completely rectangular, like a bed sheet, with parallel luff and leech and a horizontal top edge. This shape is common in Scandinavia. Sometimes the top edge even slopes down slightly towards the stern. Much more common, however, is the peaked shape, in which the upper leech rises towards the stern. In this case, the sail is usually slightly wider at the bottom than at the top, particularly when used with a boom. The cut is therefore similar to that of a gaff sail. The sailing characteristics are also comparable.
The sprit, a simple pole slightly thinner than the mast, is inserted with its upper, tapered or stepped end into an eye on the peak of the sail, pushed upwards at an angle and secured at the bottom in the mast strap. When striking the sail, the sprit is first removed, then the halyard is released, unless the sail is simply left up and secured to the mast.
The part-time fishing boats, which could still be seen from time to time fishing under sail on the Kiel Fjord and elsewhere along the Baltic coast right up until the 1960s, almost all carried a gaff-rigged mainsail and a jib; some were also rigged with two masts. These were, at least in West Germany, probably the last working boats to be powered by sail.
Because the sprit sail is so simple, yet performs roughly the same as a gaff sail, it was and is still seen on smaller working boats not only in Northern Europe, but also in the Caribbean and the South Seas, for example. Compared to a lugger sail, it has the advantage that it does not need to be sheeted in. However, the rigging of larger sprit sails is more complex. A large, heavy sprit that cannot be fitted or removed by hand requires its own running rigging to hold it separate from the sail and prevent it from flapping back and forth. The sail then requires not only a halyard, but the peak must also be pulled towards the nock of the fixed sprit using a sheet. On larger vessels, the sprit sail has therefore been superseded most rapidly by the gaff sail.
Examples of fairly large vessels with gaff sails included the Central and East German Haff and inland barges, some of which were up to three-masted. Very large sprit sails are also carried by the English Thames barges, flat-bottomed cargo sailing vessels with leeboards, roughly comparable to the cargo barges of the Lower Elbe. A hundred years ago, there were thousands of ‘spritty barges’ on the English east coast; today, only a few dozen remain in service as charter vessels. Depending on their size, they carry between 300 and 500 square metres of sail area.
At first glance, the rig looks primitive and unwieldy. Nevertheless, these flat-bottomed ships were sailed as cargo vessels by a crew of just two men. This is possible because the sprit – which weighs several tonnes and also serves as a loading boom – and the mainsail never need to be lowered or furled. Both remain hoisted at all times; the sail is gathered towards the mast and the upper leech like a pleated curtain. The sprit is kept under control by a pair of blocks mounted on pulleys, which run from its upper end to both sides of the aft deck.
More classics in YACHT classic
Are you interested in the world of classic yachts, traditional boatbuilding and the history of sailing? Then read more about it in our special edition, YACHT classic.
Simpler, cheaper, easier to reef: could there be more practical sense in some old rigging set-ups than in many modern solutions? Share your thoughts in the comments.