Category: Sailing Lessons

We have some beginners in the club and some sailors wanting to learn to race. Here are some introductory slides on the points of sail. Then we transition to how you can sail upwind for fun and in racing, by understanding your lay-lines and playing the lifts and headers. Slides

Here’s a slide show with some basic knots. 

Animatedknots.com is also great.

 

 

A first, small boat sailors may find the moves involved in a tack feel unnatural. But if you practice the motions — beginning with proper form and sitting on the windward side of the boat, it will become almost automatic.

Here’s a good breakdown of the steps in slow motion on land. This basic process holds for any size sailboat from 10 to 20 feet.*  Practice this and you’ll tack consistently, and you won’t end up on the low side of the boat, tangled up in the sheet or dropping the tiller!

(*US Sailing does not emphasize easing the mainsheet to slow the boat; there may be some situations where this is a good idea. Also, I’d like to see the skipper not move the rudder so much when he is switching hands).

 

This second video demonstrates a few common mistakes. Avoid these!

Some of our sailors will be sailing at a Regatta later this Spring. Learning to race is a great way to improve your sailing. Each boat requires a skipper and crew person, so even newer sailors can join in if they’d like to experience racing.

If you’ve never seen a sailboat race, here are two useful videos.

This first video, produced by a student at UGA, explains how buoys are used to mark out a race course on the water.

And here is an example of a race start from the 2013 national college sailing championship. (These are very high-level teams! It’s like the March Madness of sailing!)