Standing rigging is the rigging that is more or less fixed in place and holding up the masts. It usually consists of steel cables, more properly called wire rope or, sometimes, steel rod. In contrast, running rigging mainly comprises the lines that hoist and control the sails and is made of rope. Some boats have no standing rigging, often because their carbon fiber masts do not need that support. This makes for an uncluttered deck but also leaves you without a handy place to grab and hold on when going forward.
Kinds of rigA sailboat with one mast amidship and two Marconi (ie, triangular) sails is a sloop. Adding a second headsail, or staysail (rhymes with "gray gull") makes it a cutter. Adding a smaller mizzen mast aft of the main mast makes it a ketch, if the mizzen is forward of the rudder post, or a yawl, if the mizzen is aft of the rudder post. Yawls evolved to exploit class racing rules and are rarely built nowadays. Adding instead a mizzen aft that is taller than the forward mast makes it a schooner. A cat boat has one mast well forward and one sail. The cat ketch adds a mizzen mast near where the mast on a sloop would be.
Rig type
pros and consA sloop with two sails, main and jib, will out-perform other rigs upwind, and performance will improve as sail area increases. At some point, however, the sails become too large to handle. The headsail can be split into a jib and a staysail, with some loss of performance to windward, and the main can be reduced by adding a mizzen. Most cutters are cruising boats whose staysail might not even be useful when beating.
As the length and displacement of a sloop rises, it becomes tempting to break up the fore triangle by adding a forestay slightly behind the headstay and flying a staysail from it. A boat designed as a cutter will have its mast stepped near the center of the boat whereas on a double headsail sloop, to which a second headstay was added, the mast is farther forward. A cutter is inherently slower than a sloop, owing to interaction between its headsails, and it cannot point as high. Its jib must be small, often a high-footed or Yankee jib that can slip cleanly between the two forestays when tacking. Compensating for these drawbacks are the flexibility of a cutter's sail plan as the wind rises. Taking a reef in the mainsail moves the center of effort forward, which can cause lee helm. Simultaneously dropping the jib, and sailing with only the reefed main and staysail, moves the center of effort aft, restoring balance. This also keeps the working headsail closer to the cockpit and eliminates the need to change down to a smaller jib.
It is also tempting, as the size of a sloop grows larger, to break up the mainsail, which grows increasingly difficult to handle. The smaller main on a ketch or yawl need not be reefed as quickly if the wind rises, and when the main is reefed, the mizzen balances the jib so that it need not be swapped down to a smaller size as quickly.
Rigging failureUnless you replace it, rigging will fail eventually. The most important thing, when this happens, is to react instantly and not let the mast drop. On a boat with roller furling headsails, the headstay will surely fail first because it is under the most strain from the foil and drum swinging about at sea and the weight of the furled sail swinging at dock. If the headstay breaks, immediately turn downwind, then relax. Rig the spinnaker halyard forward to the bow as a temporary forestay. If you have no spinnaker halyard, drop the mainsail and use the main halyard instead. Only when the top of the mast is secured to the bow is it time to douse the headsail.
On a boat with a hanked-on jib, it is the shrouds that are more likely to fail. If this occurs, immediately tack, then relax. You can now sail all the way to Spitzbergen, provided that you can fetch it on this tack.