Sailing a Boat is More Than Just Steering

By Andre Sanchez

Just about everybody knows that a rudder steers a boat, but sailing a boat is more than just steering. Sailing involves an intimate knowledge of your boat, how the sails work and also of the weather to name only three of a myriad of things needed just to get a boat from one side of the harbor to the other.

The use of the rudder is elementary: turning your helm to the left pushes the rudder right and your boat moves right. Turn the helm to the right and the rudder and the boat turn left. It is not like driving a car. On a boat, right is starboard and left is port, so if you port your helm you are turning your tiller to the left, or port side.

When the wind fills a set of sails, it exerts a force on the sheets, or ropes, that are holding the sail to the mast and spars. The sheets transfer the force ultimately to the mast that in effect pulls or pushes the boat along. If the boat was not in the water it would be pulled over, but the water and buoyancy of the boat provide a resistance to this, and the force is translated in movement of the boat through the water. If everything was left to the boat, the effect of the wind would be to pull it round into the wind that is into the direction that the wind is blowing.

If the wind blows into a boat from the side, the boat will turn over if the force on the sail area is greater than that needed to turn the boat over (obviously). . That is why many yachts have large keels below water: to keep the boat more stable when sailing. It was the development of large keels and triangular sails that allowed boats to tack and to sail into the wind. Prior to that, boats sailed with the wind and were rowed against it.

There are certain terms used in sailing that it is essential to learn, and many of them have to do with direction of sailing relative to the wind direction. Hence, luffing up, or heading up as it is alternatively called, relates to the boat being steered so that the wind is almost straight on. If the wind is directly ahead, or close to it, the sails will ‘luff’, or flap about, and the sails have to be trimmed to catch what wind there is.

The opposite of luffing up is heading down. Also called bearing away, this is when you are steering so that the wind is almost directly behind you, and you have to ease off the sails and let them out from the center of the boat. Tacking is when you move the bow across the wind so that it is coming to the other side of the boat. When sailing into the wind you have to move in a zig zag fashion, so you tack back and forth across the face of the wind to make headway.

Another important property of a boat when sailing is the ‘trim’. The trim is the balance of the boat from fore to aft. When air pressure is exerted on sails and passed to the mast, the tendency is for the boat to be forced bow first into the water. In order to balance the trim when the wind is directly behind, the crew should sit aft so that boat is more level while sailing. If the wind is coming forward into the sails, for example while tacking, then the crew should sit forward to keep the bow down.

The ‘balance’ is the port to starboard balance of the boat, and you will often see this in action in races when the crew sits out over the side of the boat to keep it on an ‘even keel’. This can be critical if there is a strong wind blowing horizontally into the sail and tending to capsize the boat. On the matter of the sail, it can be trimmed as far is needed, but it can never be horizontal to the wind, or so that its front edge is exactly in line with the wind direction.

If a boat does not have a fixed keel it will likely have a centerboard. This is a board that swings down from the keel when needed. Its purpose is to stop the boat being blown sideways when sailing in a direction other than downwind. It is raised to reduce drag when the boat is sailing downwind. If it is retractable into the hull, it is called a daggerboard.

These are the basic points of sailing and show the uninitiated that there is more to sailing than just steering, in the same way than driving is different from dodgem cars. However, like driving, sailing is great fun and well worth learning.

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