Abbey Sailing Club
Established 1933
The Basics of
Sailing
Sailing is not difficult and anyone can pick up the basics, fairly
quickly, here are five key skills that need to be mastered, then you
can say, you sail.
RUNNING
– Running with the wind means the wind is coming from astern
(back) of the boat and you are ‘running’ downwind,
the sails will be out wide, catching the wind which is just pushing the
boat along.
REACHING
– The wind is coming from the side of the boat. You can sail
quite fast with the wind abeam (from the side) of the boat. The sails
will be pulled in a little, compared with running, but not tight into
the boat. If you’ve got the skill and right boat, you can
sail faster than the wind speed when ‘reaching’ the
sails act like the wing on an aeroplane and if trimmed right, will make
for some very fast sailing.
BEATING
– The boat is heading into the wind, the wind direction is
from the bow (front) of the boat. You can’t sail straight
into the wind, so the closer onto the wind you can sail is called
pointing-up. Typically a sailing dinghy can point-up to about 40
degrees off the wind. If you need to go in a direction closer to the
wind, then you have to start tacking, sailing either side of the wind
in a zigzag pattern.
GOING
ABOUT – This is a turn where the bow (front) of
the boat goes through the wind, you need to do this every time you
tack. This is the simplest type of turn, the sails will swing across
the boat as it moves across the wind direction, but quite gently.
GYBE
– this is a turn where the stern (back) of the boat goes
through the wind. This is more difficult to master than
‘going about’ as the sails will tend to snap across
the boat as the back of the sail catches the wind in the turn. You need
to duck under the boom (the pole that holds the bottom of sails out)
otherwise you get a bump on the head, generally you only forget once,
because it hurts, although everyone does it, occasionally.
If you can manage these five manoeuvres then you can sail, what comes
next is learning to do these things quickly and efficiently. Setting
the sail position to go as fast as possible takes a bit of doing, given
both the boat and the wind are shifting direction slightly all the
time, this is where the real skill comes in.
Of course, it sometimes all goes wrong and you capsize the boat! No
problem, you just pull the boat back-up using the centreboard which
sticks out under the boat to help it stop slipping sideways in the
water when you’re beating into wind. Abbey’s water
is a good place to learn to sail as the bank and rescue boat are never
very far away. Now you know the theory come along are put it into
practice, we look forwards to seeing you soon.
Last up-dated 9 January 2011