We stepped the spritsail forward and unlashed the oars, and got the steering oar out aft through the becket made for that purpose.
The clewline gave way at the first pull; the cleat to which the halyards were belayed was wrenched off, and the sail blew round the spritsail yards and head guys, which gave us a bad job to get it in.
For more than an hour she was driven on at such a rate that she seemed actually to crowd the sea into a heap before her; and the water poured over the spritsailyard as it would over a dam.
The clew-line gave way at the first pull; the cleat to which the halyards were belayed was wrenched off, and the sail blew round the spritsail yard and head guys, which gave us a bad job to get it in.
For more than an hour she was driven on at such a rate that she seemed to crowd the sea into a heap before her; and the water poured over the spritsail yard as it would over a dam.
All hands were now employed in setting up the lee rigging, fishing the spritsail yard, lashing the galley, and getting tackles upon the martingale, to bowse it to windward.
Forward the ships had bowsprits, on which each set a spritsail, from a spritsail yard.
The spritsailwould then be furled, and the spritsail-yard brought alongship.
Part of the fore-topsail was wrapped like a shawl round the lee cat-head, while the rest hung down in festoons from the collar of the fore-stay to the spritsail yard-arm.
Some one happened to be smoking on the spritsail yardarm, when the burning tobacco fell out unobserved into a fold of the sail, where it burnt through two or three breadths, and was long smelt before it could be found.
In the morning of the 21st, we saw the Unicorn a league and a half astern of us, having a foresail and spritsail out, which I afterwards perceived was for the purpose of floating her about towards the shore.
Gazing at the driving clouds that blotted out the forest, she tried to ask if he could find the river, but just then the canoe rolled and the little spritsail swelled like a balloon.
She set her lips as she watched Thirlwell haul the spritsail sheet.
Our spritsail yard, broken in two places, dangled from the bowsprit; while our mainmast was splintered from the futtock-shrouds to within ten feet of the deck.
I wished to make all the northing that was possible, but there was nothing to be done in that way with the spritsail alone.
Then, putting Cromwell to the tiller, I went forward with the others and set the topsail and forestaysail (the spritsail lying furled), which would be show enough of canvas till I saw what the weather was to be like.
Out of this well forked the bowsprit, with the spritsail yard braced fore and aft.
The spritsail further helped her in this, for, if the curl of a sea under her forefoot brought her to larboard or starboard, the sail forced her back again.
The deserted boat was in the trough of the sea, rolling drunkenly across each comber, its loose spritsail out at right angles to it and fluttering and flapping in the wind.
The spritsail flapped emptily and the boat righted to an even keel, causing the two men swiftly to change position.
The spritsail filled with the wind, suddenly, careening the frail open craft till it seemed it would surely capsize.
It is a convenient practice, when the swinging boom is alongside, to hook the topping-lift to a becket or thimble at the turning in of the fore swifter, and the forward guy to a strap and thimble on the spritsail yard.
The guys are fitted in pairs, rove through straps or snatches on the spritsail yard, and set up to eye-bolts inside of or abaft the cat-heads.
Seal-and porpoise-hunting canoes carried a sail, usually the spritsail of the dory.
In early colonial times, the Micmac used a simple square sail in their canoes and this, by the last decade of the 19th century, was replaced by a spritsail probably inspired by the dory-sail of the fishermen.
Wherever the spray struck, it turned instantly to frost, and the dipping boom of the spritsail was quickly fringed with icicles.
There's just enough to take us a mile or two down the beach over the tide with the spritsail set.
They swept around it, and after skirting a half-seen, rocky beach ran with spritsailthrashing into a little basin down to which there crept rows of mist-wrapped trees.
Banks mentions that the bluejackets called this queer ornament the "spritsail yard.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "spritsail" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
