Sailboats: Sailing The Earthen Waters

The typical sailing boat will have at least three masts with square rigging on all of them.

Sailboats are powered by the wind. Before steam powered engines were invented this was the only form of travel across great distances of water.

Sailing boats were also used as military ships to defend against pirates while traveling to distant new worlds to bring back treasures. There was large scale naval battles fought between France, Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom during the age of sail.

All sailboats have certain things in common with each other. They all have a hull, rigging, one or more masts that hold up the sails to catch the wind and gain momentum and ballast to weigh the bottom of the sailboat down so that the wind does not push the boat over. The crew of a sailboat are called sailors or hands. They take turns watching for privateers or pirates, unless they are in which case they keep on the lookout for other ships and treasure to plunder.

Sailboats can only carry so much stuff in their hold. This area is very important for any long journey to make sure you have enough food and water supply to last the entire trip. If you do not account for calm winds that slow you down or stormy weather that may blow you way off course then you may run out of supplies and you could lose the entire crew including yourself to starvation. If you navigate incorrectly you could end up on top of a reef and capsize generally killing everyone aboard.

There are many specific types of sailboats. The barque has at least three masts, fore and aft rigged mizzen mast. The brig which has two masts and is a square rigged boat. The brigantine, ketch, snow and yawl have only two masts with the mizzen at different points on the boat, the snow being a trysail mast. A dinghy is an open, one mast boat that is commonly used to travel close to shore or across small lakes.

The schooner is a sailboat that uses fore and aft sails on two or more masts. This is the most popular type of sailboat as it was created by the Dutch in the seventeenth century and further developed by the Americans during the time of the American Revolution. The most masts on a sailboat ever created was the Thomas W. Lawson in 1902, which was three hundred ninety-five feet in length and carried twenty-five sails.