The Parts of a Sailboat

Video Transcript

"My name's Steve Damm, I'm an instructor with Trade Winds and we're doing a short video here for Expert Village. I am going to start to describe some of the boat parts that you'll be looking at for the rest of the day. O.k. so, we're going to start at the pointy end. Kelly is going to assist me and point out some of the boat parts, as we move from the bow to the stern, which is the back of the boat. We have of course, an anchor on here. An anchor is an important safety feature. If you get in trouble you can always put the anchor out and get yourself out of a lot of trouble. This stainless, actually, stainless steel structure is called the bow pulpit and just attached to the bow, is the roller furling system and that rolls up the jib for easy deployment and putting it away. The jib is the screen line that's going up to the top of the mast and that's a, underneath it is the forsyte. The lines that Kelly's holding onto right now are the jib sheets. And, we use those to control the trim of the jib. As we move back there's some lines underneath here, are stainless steel ropes and those are the life lines that are attached to the bow pulpit and these stainless steel structures called stantions. As we move further back, we'll take a look at the mast, the mast I think most people know, is where we are going to raise the sails. This horizontal piece of metal is the boom, it keeps, again helps hold the sail up. The mast is held up by stainless steel ropes which are a part of the standing rigging. Down the sides we have shrouds, to keep it from, the mast from falling sideways. So, we have these barrel shaped items, those are called winches, they're used to gain mechanical advantage. By wrapping the lines around there, then there's a handle that will fit in the top. A winch is used to gain mechanical advantage, these are self tailing winches which are nice, you don't have to have someone pulling on the end of the line, while you crank it. And, the way they work is you just turn the handle and you gain quite a bit of leverage by cranking that around and it's ratcheted so it only goes one way. Generally, you want to wrap a winch, the line around a winch in a clockwise manner, and while you're doing so especially in larger boats you want to keep your fingers out of the way. Sometimes it can be somewhat dangerous. Too, for the jib sheets, this particular one is for the main sheet, on the top of the cabin and the other one is for the halyard, which we're going to use in a minute, to raise the main sail. O.k. so, we're now in the cockpit area and that's where you'll find the heart of the boat, as far as the motor and steering and that sort of thing. Kelly has her hand on the wheel there, you'll also find your motor controls, throttle and it also shifts, changes gears by pulling it backwards, or forward. We have a VHF radio located here. Another good safety item, and depending on the boat you have a lot of instruments, or not so many, but this is where they would be located. This structure I have my hands on now, is the stern pulpit and it's basically the bow and stern pulpits are used to keep people on board or they?re another good safety item. And we're now at the stern."