Sailing Trivia by Tradewinds Instructor Ian Joseph
The vast majority of modern sailing boats, including the Tradewinds fleet are sloops.
A sloop (from the Dutch word sloep, in turn from the French chaloupe) is a sailboat with a fore-and-aft rig and a single mast farther forward than the mast of a cutter. The sloop rig is one of the simpler sailing rig configurations (the cat rig, having only a mainsail is the simplest). A sloop almost always has two sails, a mainsail and a jib. No rig type is perfect for all conditions. Sloops, with their minimal amount of spars and control lines tend to impart less aerodynamic drag. Compared to other types, sloops therefore tend to perform very well when sailing upwind or close hauled. However, sloops also offer an excellent overall compromise of abilities on all points of sail.