- published: 30 Apr 2016
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Cutter may refer to several types of nautical vessels:
The cutter is one of several types of sailboats. Traditionally the sloop rig was a rig with a single mast located forward of 70% of the length of the sailplan. In this traditional definition a sloop could have multiple jibs on a fixed bowsprit.[citation needed]
Cutters had a rig with a single mast more centrally located, which could vary from 50% to 70% of the length of the sailplan, with multiple headsails and a running bowsprit.[citation needed] A mast located aft of 50% would be considered a mast aft rig.
Somewhere in the 1950s or 1960s there was a shift in these definitions such that a sloop only flew one headsail and a cutter had multiple headsails and mast position became irrelevant. In this modern idiom, a cutter is a sailing vessel with more than one head sail and one mast. Cutters carry a staysail directly in front of the mast, set from the forestay. A traditional vessel would also normally have a bowsprit to carry one or more jibs from its end via jibstay(s) on travelers (to preserve the ability to reef the bowsprit). In modern vessels the jib may be set from a permanent stay fixed to the end of a fixed (non-reeving) bowsprit, or directly to the stem fitting of the bow itself. In these cases, that may be referred to as the forestay, and the inner one, which will be less permanent in terms of keeping the mast up, may be called the stays'l stay. A sloop carries only one head sail, called either the foresail or jib.[citation needed].
Cutter may refer to:
A boat is a watercraft of any size designed to float or plane, to provide passage across water. Usually this water will be inland (lakes) or in protected coastal areas. However, boats such as the whaleboat were designed to be operated from a ship in an offshore environment. In naval terms, a boat is a vessel small enough to be carried aboard another vessel (a ship). Another less restrictive definition is a vessel that can be lifted out of the water. Strictly speaking and uniquely a submarine is a boat as defined by the Royal Navy[citation needed]. Some boats too large for the naval definition include the Great Lakes freighter, riverboat, narrowboat and ferryboat. The term armed boat, used primarily by English speaking naval forces, referred to any boat carrying either a cannon or armed occupants, such as marines[citation needed].
Boats have served as short-distance transportation since early times. Circumstantial evidence, such as the early settlement of Australia over 40,000 years ago, and findings in Crete dated 130,000 years ago, suggests that boats have been used since ancient times. The earliest boats have been predicted to be logboats. The oldest boats to be found by archaeological excavation are logboats from around 7,000–10,000 years ago. The oldest recovered boat in the world is the Pesse canoe; it is a dugout or hollowed tree trunk from a Pinus sylvestris. It was constructed somewhere between 8200 and 7600 B.C. This canoe is exhibited in the Drents Museum in Assen, Netherlands; other very old dugout boats have been recovered. A 7,000 year-old seagoing boat made from reeds and tar has been found in Kuwait.