Fore-and-aft rig
Videos
A fore-and-aft rig is a sailing ship rig with sails set mainly in the median plane of the keel, rather than perpendicular to it, as on a square-rigged vessel.
The gaff-rigged schooner Effie M. Morrissey
Micronesian wa with crab claw sail
The earliest European fore-and-aft rigs appeared in the form of spritsails in Greco-Roman navigation, as this carving of a 3rd century AD Roman merchant ship
One of the ships in Borobudur depicting a double-outrigger vessel with fore-and-aft tanja sails on tripod masts (c. 8th century AD)
Gaff rig
Videos
Gaff rig is a sailing rig in which the sail is four-cornered, fore-and-aft rigged, controlled at its peak and, usually, its entire head by a spar called the gaff. Because of the size and shape of the
Reliance, a competitor in the 1903 America's Cup and the largest gaff-rigged cutter ever built
A gaff-rigged sail and its surrounding spars
The gaff-rigged schooner Rose Dorothea won the 1907 Lipton's Cup, despite a broken foretopmast (pictured)
Gaff rigged schooner J. & E. Riggin. Her sails, from left to right, are: jib, staysail, gaff foresail, gaff mainsail, and, above that, a main gaff topsail