How to Hoist the Main Sail : A Lesson in the Fundamentals of Sailing

Video Transcript

" Hello, my name is Kevin Winsley, I’m with Offshore Sailing School and today on Expert Village we’re going to be talking about getting the main sail hoisted on a Colgate 26. So to get a sail up we’re going to have to attach a line that pulls the sail up and that line in sailing terminology is called the halyard. So what I’m looking for is the main halyard and the main halyard will likely sit at the top of the mast and come out somewhere on the boat and what we’re using it for right now, this red line here is called the topping lift, it just keeps the boom up while the sail is down. What we need to do is transfer the halyard from the end of the boom to the head of the main sail and that’s going to be here. So Craig go ahead and pass back the halyard to me, so Craig has just done fasting the shackle and then we’ll transfer that forward to the top corner of the main sail which is called the head. Just go ahead and attach the head of the sail, great and then we’ll take out some of the slack on the main halyard here, great, so that it doesn’t get caught up around in the rigging. The secret to a really good hoist is making sure that as the sail up goes it is going to be de-powered so in order to do that we have to have the boat facing into the wind. Conveniently here at the dock if we look up the mast at fly the arrow at the top of the mast there we can see it is pointing straight over the bow. So that tells me that the wind is coming over the bow of the boat and that’s a good spot for getting the main sail up. The other thing is if I’m going to put the sail up I’m going to have anything that’s pulling the sail down released. A couple of the controls that do that, one is called the boom vang, so here’s the boom vang, it’s a rigid vang in Colgate 26. I’m just going to release that so that allows the boom to rise a little as the sail goes up. The other control that Jill is coiling back here is called the mainsheet. So I’m going to want that nice and loose so if you can uncoil that for me Jill, great the control here is the mainsheet control so that is released as well and finally we have these ties that just keep the sail on the boom while the sail is down, we’re going to untie those and hoist at the same time. Okay Craig go ahead and hoist. Very nice. "