How to Sail a Catboat

Catboats, with their gleaming wooden hulls and strangely shaped sails, evoke images of calm days sailing on the lake. Unfortunately, actually sailing a catboat is a little bit like bathing a cat-- the vessel wriggles, struggles and seems to resist you at every opportunity. With the right know-how, though, catboat sailing can be smooth and exciting.

Instructions

1. Raise the sail. Get a firm footing on the boat and make sure you have your balance. Take the mast and boom, furled together, and move forward to the hole that the mast fits into. Drop the mast into the hole and let the boom drop down (or lower it down if it's a bigger sail). Rig up the lines, make sure everything is ship-shape and get ready to go.

2. Drop the centerboard. Catboats generally have very heavy centerboards that allows the boats to have stable forward motion and prevent the inevitable weather helm of such a forward-heavy boat. Drop the centerboard as soon as you intend to stop paddling and start sailing.

3. Get the boat moving forward. After you've raised the sail the boat tends to move, but in the wrong direction. The backward movement can be perplexing but all you need to do to get going in the correct direction is use the tiller to steer in the opposite manner of forward steering. Use the reversed steering to set the boat onto a reasonable point of sail and give the tiller a few good sculling pumps to counter the backward momentum of the boat.

4. Sit up on the rails. Catboats want to throw you in the water, or so it seems. As you get underway and the boat starts to heel a bit, sit up on the rail to prevent the boat from capsizing. If winds are light, try to get low into the boat, slightly aft of center, to keep the boat stable as it sails.

5. Tack thoroughly. In strong winds you can sail the boat close to the wind and use speed and your point of sail to tack fairly easily. In lighter winds, when the boat doesn't want to get near the wind, gain as much momentum as possible. Then make a fast, committed turn as you pull the sail high up and turn past your desired course on the new tack. As soon as the sail starts to backwind, release it to its previous setting or reset it for the new course.