A Sloop Sailboat Rig

A Sloop Sailboat Rig 

The sloop sailboat is one of the most common sailing rigs today because it is easy to sail and very efficient. It is a sail boat with one mast and a fore-and-aft rig comprising a mainsail and a single foresail.  The name sloop is from the Dutch sloep.

The typical Bermuda rigged sloop is what most people think of and picture as a sailboat, most  have a fractional rig. The mainsail may be smaller than the headsail, which is then called a genoa jib.
A modern sloop carries a mainsail on a boom aft of the mast and has a single loose-footed headsail (a jib or a genoa jib) forward of the mast.

A sloop sailing rig is simple and efficient sailing setup. After the cat rig, which has only a mainsail, the sloop rig is one of the simpler sailing rig configurations. A small sloop can be sailed by one person easily. The different headsails that are available lets you easily pick a sail set for different wind conditions making it a very versatile boat to sail.

Sloops tend to perform very well when sailing close hauled to windward and they are usual good on all points of sail. The ability to sail well close hauled makes the boat popular with many sailors.