MAINSAIL - meaning and definition. What is MAINSAIL
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What (who) is MAINSAIL - definition

SAIL RIGGED ON THE MAIN MAST OF A SAILING VESSEL
Main sail; Mainsails
  • A square-rigged vessel

MAINSAIL         
Mainsail         
·noun The principal sail in a ship or other vessel.
mainsail         
['me?nse?l, -s(?)l]
¦ noun the principal sail of a ship.
?the sail set on the after part of the mainmast in a fore-and-aft rigged vessel.

Wikipedia

Mainsail

A mainsail is a sail rigged on the main mast of a sailing vessel.

  • On a square rigged vessel, it is the lowest and largest sail on the main mast.
  • On a fore-and-aft rigged vessel, it is the sail rigged aft of the main mast. The sail's foot is normally attached to a boom. (In extremely heavy weather, the mainsail may be lowered, and a much smaller trysail hoisted in its place).

Historical fore-and-aft rigs used a four-sided gaff rigged mainsail, sometimes setting a gaff topsail above it.

Whereas once the mainsail was typically the largest sail, today the mainsail may be smaller than the jib or genoa; Prout catamarans typically have a mainmast stepped further aft than in a standard sloop, so that the mainsail is much smaller than the foresail.

Pronunciation examples for MAINSAIL
1. The mainsail weighed three times my body weight,
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Examples of use of MAINSAIL
1. It was so badly damaged that the mainsail could not be raised.
2. My boat (OK, not mine, Hugo‘s boat) is worth about 1.5m, but I prefer the fact that the mainsail alone cost 40,000.
3. It is liquidity provider to Golden Key and Mainsail II –– both of which are selling assets –– and to Cairn High Grade Funding I, where it worked alongside Danske Bank.
4. It was horrific." The race‘s final Briton, Mike Golding, a former firefighter from Southampton, described the seas as "pretty friggin‘ enormous". He was forced to climb up the mast of his yacht, Ecover, to make running repairs but had to turn back with problems including a holed mainsail.
5. Speaking after he sailed into Weymouth, Lord Glentoran, who won a bobsleighing gold medal in the 1'64 Winter Olympics, said: "I did what any other yachtsman would have done and I‘m just happy that we were there to help." Mr Murdoch, a Belfast Coastguard watch manager and friend of the peer, said the man had been knocked into the sea by the boom as he tried to take the mainsail down.