Tag: Sheet

In sailing, a sheet is a line (rope, cable or chain) used to control the movable corner(s) (clews) of a sail.
“Sheet” derives from Old English “scéata” meaning the lower corner of a sail.
Fore-and-aft rigs comprise the vast majority of sailing vessels in use today, including effectively all dinghies and yachts. The sheet on a fore-and-aft sail controls the angle of the sail to the wind, and should be adjusted to keep the sail just filled. Most smaller boats use the Bermuda rig, which has two or three sets of sheets:
On the smallest boats, a sheet is often a simple rope, pulled by hand; on larger boats, usually on the mainsheet, it is often a system using several blocks to provide mechanical advantage. At one time, headsail sheets on yachts also involved blocks, but the disadvantages of having large amounts of line and loose blocks free to move all over the forward part of the vessel mean that such systems have been almost universally replaced with single-line sheets holding immense…