Amazing Grace Tall Ship sailing in Pacific Ocean

A fisherman staysail is a sail placed between the fore and main

mast Mast, MAST or MASt may refer to: Engineering * Mast (sailing), a vertical spar on a sailing ship * Flagmast, a pole for flying a flag * Guyed mast, a structure supported by guy-wires * Mooring mast, a structure for docking an airship * Radio mast ...

s of a sailing ship, usually a

schooner A schooner () is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast. A common variant, the topsail schoon ...

but also including

brigantine A brigantine is a two-masted sailing vessel with a fully square-rigged foremast and at least two sails on the main mast: a square topsail and a gaff sail mainsail (behind the mast). The main mast is the second and taller of the two masts. Older ...

s. All four of its sides are typically set flying, although the luff may be attached to the mast (possibly with in-mast

furl Furl (from File Uniform Resource Locators) was a free social bookmarking website that allowed members to store searchable copies of webpages and share them with others. Every member received 5 gigabytes of storage space. The site was founded by ...

ing) on a staysail schooner. The purpose of a fisherman staysail is to catch light winds aloft, as it is a large sail set high on the masts. In some rigs, it overlaps other sails and Spar (sailing), spars such as the Gaff rig, gaff of the foresail and therefore must be fully lowered and re-raised at every Tack (sailing), tack and Jibe (sailing), jibe. Because of this, a fisherman staysail is unusual on a gaff schooner, but on a staysail schooner, the fisherman staysail is a useful way to fill the upper gap between the masts. A staysail is mainly suitable in light to medium airs; in strong winds it does little more than heel the vessel.

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