Video: The Points of a Sail : Learn the Fundamentals of Sailing

Learn about the points of a sail in this free how-to video clip sailing lesson on the fundamentals of sailing.

Video Transcript

Hello! My name is Kevin Winsley. I’m with Offshore Sailing School and today on Expert Village I’m going to talk you through the different points of sail, mostly about sailing around in sailboats. The first thing to know about sailboats is we can’t sail straight up wind. So once we know where the wind is coming from we know we can’t sail in that direction so we have a term, which is the no goes on. We can’t sail straight up wind. Sailboats can sail at 45 degrees to the wind, so I can’t sail close to the wind like this and if I’m sailing close to the wind then this is called a close haul and using this diagram over here we can say we’re on a close haul, on the edge of the wind and the sails are pulled in nice and tight. So that put in some tight sails like that. I believe there are three points of sail that are very specific and another point of sail is where the wind is coming right over the beam of the boat. So here we have the wind coming right over the beam of the boat and the sails will be halfway out and that would be called a beam reach, so we can see here that the wind is coming right over the side of the boat and the sails halfway out. Another very specific points of sail is when we’re sailing the down wind all we could set to be on a run. So we can see over here again, the boat sailing right off the wind or on a run, now anybody sailing in this piece of pie here between a close haul and a beam reach is said to be on something called a close reach. So anything between close haul and a beam reach is a close reach. Once again here we have a boat sailing between a close haul and a beam reach is a close reach. Anyone sailing in this piece of pie here between a beam reach and a run is said to be on a broad reach. So again, beam reach, run, anything in the middle is said to be on a broad reach. And the last thing to watch out for is to make sure you don’t sail so far off the wind that you find yourself sailing with the wind coming over the same side as the main sail. If you do that you’re said to be sailing by the lee and once you get to sailing by the lee then you need to know how to do maneuvers such as jibing.

The Points of a Sail : Learn the Fundamentals of Sailing

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