Possibilities of a visual reference for sail configurations

[N Mart]

Greetings to all!

 

I've been under several responsibility rocks for a while and am digging my way out. Good to be looking at ships again.

 

I was reading a few sources recently and kept bumping into sail settings that I was having trouble envisioning in my mind. It occurred to me that a configurable visual reference would be incredible, which led me to wonder if anyone has tried to create an application that showed sail situations based on user input.

 

For example, you could select a brig, then select topsails, gallants, and royals, and a basic image of a brig with the appropriate sails set would generate below. Maybe even complicated enough to show what sails would look like reefed in those conditions.

 

Has anyone ever bumped into anything like that? Anyone else think that would be a neat reference to have for modeling or maritime art?

 

Be well!

[popeye2sea]

There are plenty of reference materials that will depict general rigging plans, i.e. the differences between a ship, brig, barque, barkentine, etc.  Once you try to refine the rig for wind and wave conditions, the variations are myriad. Not to mention variations in rig based on the time period the vessel belongs to. There are variations in reefing, hoisting, furling, dowsing, scandalizing, canting, bracing, and sending down.

 

It would be a very big endeavor (plus, historically, years to learn).

 

Regards,

 

Henry

[JerryTodd]

John Harland's Seamanship-in-the-Age-of-Sail

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1472982371/ref=olp-opf-redir?aod=1&ie=UTF8&condition=ALL

[paul ron]

the last chapters has some manuvering techniques with drawings 

 

https://archive.org/details/apdfYoungSeaOfficersSheetAnchorFileSizeReduced/page/n140/mode/1up

[sheepsail]

At the Maker Faire over the weekend on Mare Island the park service was handing out this volvelle.

 

When you rotate the window, it shows things like the difference between a bark and a barkenteen.   Usefull as I keep running into the term sloop.  I pretty much know what a schooner is, since those are my favorites.   The flip site show some rigging.   Still learning the names of the sails.  I have an old 19th century textbook which also gives some of this info.

 

Looks like the card might also be capeleble of being used as a binnacle.  

 

By chance I have been re reading the Sea Wolf.   The brutal sadistic Wolf Larsen  makes such a thing in a moment of calm.  These were quite popular in the 18th century for doing some of the trigonometric calculation.   Tricky though to use as such things are variants of an astrolabe, which require the understanding of stereo projection.  Without a good watch Or other timekeeper,  they are also somewhat awkward on the rolling deck of a ship or boat.

 

 

Edited 14 hours ago by sheepsail

[grimey]

Another source Alan Villiers "The Way of a Ship" Chapters 5 and 6 "Handling Square Sail" and "Ship handling Under Sail". Some fine drawings by H. Underhill show a voyage of a square-rigger from "heave up" to "let go" through a variety of weather.