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| Sailing Rigs |
 Title text: I wanted to make the world's fastest yawl, so I made the aft sail bigger, but apparently that means it's not a yawl anymore! It's a real ketch-22. |
Explanation
This comic shows the side profiles of a variety of different sailing boat/ship rigs, not all of which are real. The first six which are listed are real, as well as the tenth, but none of the others are. A Flettner rotor (shown in the tenth one) is a cylinder with disc end plates which is spun along its long axis, generating force at a right angle to the direction of the wind.
- Lateen: a single triangular sail.
- Bermuda rigged sloop: a front and rear triangular sail share a mast.
- Ketch: two triangular sails as above, with an additional triangular sail on a second rear mast.
- Gaff rigged sloop: front triangular sail shares mast with rear quadrilateral sail.
- Yawl: two triangular sails share front mast and a much smaller aft mast holds a small aft.
- Schooner: two triangular front sails share foreward mast with quadrilateral center sail. An aft mast supports a quadrilateral aft sail.
- Ketch-rigged gaff: The first fictional rig. Resembles a gaff, with the aft sail reduced and two triangular sails mounted above. The resulting shape resembles a vertical ketch.
- Kloop-rigged sketch: A mixture of the names of ketch and sloop, poking fun at the unfamiliar names of some rigs.
- Bunkbed rig: A gaff-rigged sloop is mounted on top of a second hull.
- Flettner rig: A single rectangular sail.
- Oops, all spinnakers: three masts each with a sail only attached to the top.
- Keel rig: three sales in a ketch arrangement, but mounted to the keel, which would typically put the **sails underwater**.
- Kite rig: all sails are replaced by two groups of kites, each tied to the mast with an independent line.
- Longsail rig: bermuda rigged sloop with the aft sail extending ~5 times as far back, well beyond the end of the hull.
- Deckhand obliterator: all sails replaced by an anchor that swings around the mast on a chain, similar to tetherball. Any deckhands (crew) on the deck could be knocked off or fatally hurt if the anchor passes through their space.
- Offset rig: gaff rigged sloop sails are mounted on a mast that is offset (forward) from the hull via an underwater extension of the keel.
- Mastless rig: a single sail is attached where the mast would normally be mounted, flapping around freely. This provides much less propulsion or steering.
- Unclassifiable chaos rig: includes elements of the schooner, yawl, lateen, and possibly others.
The title text is a pun on a Catch-22, a no-win situation in which the thing needed to succeed would cause it not to succeed or not to be necessary. For instance, "the only way to qualify for a loan is to prove to the bank that you do not need a loan." Per the main panel, a ketch is similar to a yawl but has a larger aft sail, so increasing the aft sail of a yawl effectively turns the yawl into a ketch.
Transcript
[The comic contains views from the side of boats, each with a different sailing rig. All boats are oriented to the left of the comic.]
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