Chapter 3 - Before Casting Off

Before you take your boat out for the first time, it would be wise to go over the operation of each line and every piece of gear so that you will be sure of their function. This will save you a great deal of time and trouble when you are out on the water.

To study the sails, lay them out on the lawn to see what they look like. Compare them with the sail-plan drawing in Chapter 1. While they are still on the lawn, mark their corners for easy handling, so that when you pull the sails out of their bag (your sails should be stored in sail bags) in the cramped quarters of a small boat you can quickly find the corner you want by reading your mark. Lay out the foot of the mainsail and jib roughly parallel on the ground just as they will appear when set and flying on your boat.

Before we describe how to set the sails on the boat, here are a few words of advice on boarding a sailboat. Getting in and out of a sailboat properly is a frequent cause of embarrassing mishaps. The most common mistake is to keep one foot on the dock, the other in the boat. Unless you're a split personality to begin with, you'll end up in the water, and the boat will be adrift. To avoid this, never try to balance yourself between boat and dock; forget the dock entirely, and concentrate on balancing yourself in the boat. If your boat is docked, board amidships rather than at the extreme bow and stern ends. Step into the craft with the weight of your body forward. Never jump onto the deck or floorboards you can damage the hull or capsize the craft.

Sailing instructions on the water. Instructor calls out the proper procedure in various sailing points.

If the boat is moored at a buoy, follow these procedures:

1. Come alongside in the dinghy.

2. Put your gear aboard carefully; don't throw it.

3. Climb aboard at the center of the boat about the middle and remember to balance the tender or dinghy.

4. Drop the centerboard to add stability to the boat. Then be sure to balance the boat as others get aboard.

5. Bail boat if necessary before starting to bend on sails.

Bending On And Hoisting The Sails

Once you, your crew, and gear are aboard, the first job is to "bend on" the sails, or, in everyday English, fasten them in their proper positions for sailing. The mast generally will be already stepped in place and the shrouds or stays made tight. The exception to this, of course, is when you trailer your boat. The procedure involved in stepping a mast is illustrated on the following pages.

Manufacturers usually furnish complete rigging instructions with their boats, and these instructions should be followed to the letter.
 
In general, to bend on the mainsail, start at the gooseneck, feeding the foot of the sail, clew first, into the slot on the boom. The screw pin in the gooseneck slips through the tack of the sail to hold it in place. Draw the foot of the sail out along the boom until the foot is just tight. The outhaul (a small rope) should be attached to the fitting on the boom with a bowline, then passed through the clew of the sail, the fitting, around again and cleated on the boom. Next, fasten the "jiffy shackle" on the mainsail halyard to the head of the mainsail, and feed the luff of the sail into the mast slot until all the luff is in the slot. Hoist the sail fully and adjust the downhaul (until the luff is tight) and cleat it. The position of the sliding cleat may be adjusted by loosening the screws.

With the mainsail bent on, the battens can be placed in their pockets. (Battens give the leach of the sail its proper shape, and if you fail to use them regularly you run the risk of permanently distorting the sail.) The battens are of various lengths, corresponding to the length of their respective pockets. The shortest pockets and battens are toward the foot and the head; the longer ones are in the middle of the leach. The battens should fit their pockets loosely and they should be tied through the grommets on the sails and through holes in the ends of the battens at the leach. Sometimes the battens pockets have snappers at the outer end to hold in the battens, and on some of the newer sails there are trick pockets which have no fastening but from which the battens can't blow out. On some of the smaller mainsails the battens are sewn in and are held permanently in place.

Method of stepping mast for the Sprite when it is used with a single sail or when it is rigged as a catboat.

To bend on the jib, hook the luff to the fore-stay and shackle the tack to the deck fitting. The jib halyard is then attached to the jib just as the mainsail was. Shackle the "jiffy shackle" on the jib sheets to the clew of the sail and run them aft on either side of the mast, through the sliding blocks, to the jam cleats on the cuddy. The jib is now ready for hoisting.

If the boat has a portable rudder, it has probably been stored ashore; it should now be installed. This can be done simply by sliding the rudder in the pintles (slots or supports used to hold the rudder and allow it to turn freely) on the transom and inserting a cotter-pin to prevent losing it in a seaway. The tiller is now slipped into its socket at the top of the rudder and under the traveler. Don't try to sail a boat without a tiller, or you'll find that you have no way to control the boat. The tiller is the boat's steering mechanism, without which you're at the mercy of the wind. Most modern sailboat rudders are of the kick-up type, which means that they will automatically kick up when in shallow water or when they hit a rock or other obstacle. Be sure that this pivoting rudder is always all the way down each time you set sail. Your rudder can sink if you drop it overboard, so be careful.

Rigging the boom and installing the rudder.

Before you set sail, be sure to move everything on the boat to see how it works. Raise and lower the centerboard several times. (Until you're more familiar with sailing it's best to keep the centerboard down all the time.) Check your tiller before setting sail, examine the stays, haul the sheets in and out, and the halyards up and down.

When getting underway, hoist the mainsail first, then the jib. The only possible exception to this rule is when taking off downwind; then it may be more convenient to hoist the jib first. In most cases, however, if you should hoist your jib first, the wind may catch it and carry the bow of the boat away from the wind. But if you hoist the mainsail first, the pressure of the wind on it simply makes you head into the wind so that you won't start before you are ready. (Actually, many sailors don't hoist the jib until they are ready to cast off from a mooring or dock or to raise their anchors.) When hoisting, haul on the halyards until all wrinkles disappear along the luff of the sails. After cleating the halyards (never use a half hitch), make them up into neat coils and place them neatly on the cleats. After the sails are up, they will flap from side to side as the wind strikes them. Watch out for the boom. As the wind shifts slightly, the breeze will blow first on one side of the sail, then on the other, sending the boom swinging from side to side. Slack off on the sheets so that any movement of the sails isn't too restricted until you are ready to get underway.

Method of stepping mast for the Sprite when it is used with two sails or when it is rigged as a sloop.

The Wind And You

The wind is the power that makes your boat go it's the boss. So your first step is to accept it, learn to understand it, and then take advantage of it.

Some people just have no sense about the wind: they sit around on the dock for half an hour, and they rig the boat and get into it, and then they shout to somebody: "Say, which way is the wind blowing today?"

Until you took up sailing, perhaps the only thing you ever wondered about the wind was whether it was likely to blow your hat off. Then, for sailing, you begin to pay attention to it, and right away (as is the case in human relations) the care you put into getting to know the wind makes it interesting and brings you pleasure. Actually, the way to learn about the wind is simple: observe it; feel it. When you get out on the dock, look around. Watch the action of the wind in your sails. When you are familiar with it, this action will tell you more than anything else about where the wind is. In the meantime, look at the trees, at smoke from chimneys, at the flag fluttering on the boathouse, smoke from a cigarette, the little ripples on the surface of the water. Feel the breeze in your hair, on the back of your neck. Put your face to the wind and turn it from side to side: you'll hear the wind first in one ear and then the other; when you hear it equally in both ears, your nose is pointed into the wind.

On your first day of sailing you'll learn that a boat will move directly before the wind (the sails should be out as far as they can go); beat or tack within about 45 degrees of the direction from which the wind is coming (the sails should be trimmed in as far as you can pull them); and reach across the wind (the sails should be trimmed nearly half-way in). You'll quickly recognize that you must present your sails at an angle as close as possible to the wind without their fluttering, luffing, or breaking. Most experienced sailors use a tell-tale on the rigging. This can be made from colored ribbon, a piece of cloth or string, in fact anything that you can tie to the stays of your boat six feet up from the deck. (Some sailors insist on having a pennant at the very head of the mast, to show wind direction, but a one-foot tell-tale will tell you almost as much as the mast-top pennant, is much easier to install and is less expensive, and is at an eye level when you are sailing your craft saving a certain amount of neck-craning.) The tell-tales indicate the angle of the apparent wind. The term "apparent wind" is the difference between the true wind and the right-angle thrust from the plane of the sail. This is the wind effect you sail with; if you keep the head of the sail nearly parallel to the tell-tale, you will obtain the maximum drive from the body of the sail. You'll find that you'll grow accustomed to checking the tell-tales to indicate the thousands of sometimes almost imperceptible wind shifts that will occur in one afternoon.
Watch the wind on the water. On a calm day, see the "cat's-paws" of wind make their lovely fleeting patterns. On a rough day, watch the dark patches moving across the water; the heavier the wind, you will notice, the darker the color. By keeping a watchful eye on the water to windward, you're ready for whatever blows your way.

In addition to the wind, you must consider the effect of tide and current. In salt water, tide and current flow in one direction for a given number of hours, and in the next period they flow the opposite way. Unless you sail where the current runs very strong, it's enough to know when the tide is high (flood) and when it is low (ebb) and the direction of the tide. You can usually find tide tables listed in your local newspaper. It's easier, of course, to sail with the tide. When sailing on a river, the water flows in only one direction.

Getting underway in a Super Sprite.

Typical manufacturer's rigging instructions. These diagrams were taken from the instruction sheet of the Rhodes 19 and show the parts and how they go together.

Line Handling And Knots
 
Webster defines a "line" in many different ways, but for our purposes a discussion of the use of lines we'll assume a line to be a rope used in mooring, anchoring, or rigging. Actually, nothing betrays the inexperienced sailor more quickly than the condition of his lines. This stems from the old days of the sailing vessel when a ship's lines were among its most important gear. Lines are still extremely important, and keeping them shipshape is just as vital in a small sailing rig as it was to the sailors of ocean-going clippers.

To fasten lines we must use knots, and it behooves the sailboat skipper to have a rudimentary knowledge of the more common knots in order to make his lines fast properly to a pier or wharf and to fasten his mooring and other pieces of equipment that must be well secured.

Always be sure that your mooring lines are secured to strong bitts or cleats. So that they will be ready for instant use, all lines, including rigging, should be coiled. To coil a line for easy running, lay it down from right to left in a circle, beginning with the inboard end and laying each turn on or slightly inside the previous ones so that they will feed off easily without fouling. Lash them that way with three or four pieces of cord tied for quick release. Or if the rope is to be moved about or hung up, pick up the coiled rope on your forearm, leaving about five or six feet of line between it and the anchor or the bitt. Turn your arm to wrap the line twice around the entire coil. Pull a loop of the remaining line through the coil above the wrap, bring it back and down over the upper coil. If unlashed carefully, it will remain free-running for instant use.

You don't make a line fast to a cleat simply by winding it around as on a spool, but by crossing over the top of the cleat to the opposite side after every turn. This makes for greater security, so learn this simple operation now.

Another helpful practice is either to back-splice or "whip" the ends. Back-splicing may be learned from any old-salt (who might even do it for you). To whip the ends, simply wrap them with a strong string or with plastic tape so that the ends can't fray. If your rope is nylon or orlon, fraying can be prevented by burning the end of the rope. All of these methods protect the ends of the line from fraying and forming what is known as "cow-tails."

One of the most useful knots for a sailor is the clove hitch, which is used extensively for temporary moorings. It's easily tied, and has the added advantage of holding tighter the harder it's pulled. It also resists slipping down a post or piling.

In making fast to a bollard, stanchion, or timber, use two half hitches. This is one turn around the object and then a clove hitch on the standing (or holding) part of the line. A half hitch is also useful in making fast to a cleat. Simply pass your line around the neck of the cleat and then take a half hitch over one of the projections. If the half hitch that completes the fastening is taken with the free end of the line, the line can be cast off without taking up the slack on what is known as the standing part.

When a secure noose is needed for tying up to a post or piling, the bowline is a solid knot to use. Alternate tension and slack won't loosen this knot, which can also be used to fasten a line to an anchor and for various rigging applications. It is also the easiest of all sailing knots to untie.

The square or reef knot, which everyone learned to tie as a kid, is used to tie lines together or for any other use where a solid, nonslip fastening is desired. It has many uses in boating.
 
The figure eight knot is used primarily as a "sheet stopper" to prevent the sheet from running through blocks when it isn't desirable.
 
Using the illustrations given here, it might be a good idea to practice tying some of the more common knots.

Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here...