Talk:Course (sail)

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Sailing

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Edited a bit for clarification. - Dastal 18:38, 19 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Foresail?

I've never heard a sailor refer to the "fore-course". Indeed, I cannot immediately think of hearing any reference to a singular "course", only the plural "courses" to refer to the foresail and mainsail, etc. Would anyone object to the article being modified to suggest that the latter would be the customary term to specify an individual sail? Czrisher (talk) 18:35, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I concur. I have always heard foresail and mainsail, and courses when referring to the two collectively.

99.88.197.53 (talk) 02:13, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well I disconcur :-). On the square-rigged ships I've sailed in, they've always been forecourse and maincourse, and I've never heard foresail and mainsail. Indeed, while mainsail is of course commonplace on any fore-and-after, the only folks with foresails that I know are the West Country luggers pining for the mainmasts they left ashore when they turned from smuggling to fishing. (For the 200 years since, they've had a foremast and a mizzenmast but no mainmast, and the big lugsail most people would call a mainsail they huffily refer to as their foresail.) That's the thing about sailing terms - they're always a bit fluid across both time and place, so while you have a foresail tack and I have a forecourse tack, we're both right in our own sailing circles. 93.97.184.230 (talk) 23:38, 27 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Both terms are correct. The -course terms are specific, whereas the -sail terms vary in meaning depending on rig. Martocticvs (talk) 10:39, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that in normal maritime parlance, the terms "foresail", "mainsail", and "mizzen sail" apply ONLY to fore-&-aft rigged sailplans. It would be confusing to apply these terms to any square sail, so I suggest the terms be deleted from this article. Arrivisto (talk) 09:17, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

shape?

Only with square sails or with others? D1gggg (talk) 18:34, 23 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]