The staysail plays three roles: It augments sail power. It helps break down total sail area into smaller working components for ease of handling. The smaller sail units allow for different combinations, giving sailors a variety of options for different conditions.

What is a staysail stay?

A staysail ("stays'l") is a fore-and-aft rigged sail whose luff can be affixed to a stay running forward (and most often but not always downwards) from a mast to the deck, the bowsprit, or to another mast (the mast is item 13 in the illustration right).

What is the difference between a staysail and a jib?

is that staysail is (nautical) a fore-and-aft rigged sail whose luff can be affixed to a stay running forward from a mast to the deck, the bowsprit or to another mast while jib is (nautical) usually with a modifier, any of a variety of specialty triangular staysails set forward of the foremast.