Where Wind andWater Meet

Chapter Two

Where Wind and Water Meet - 32 - Where Wind and Water Meet

Since canoe sailors have varying amounts of sailing experience, itwould be wise to devote a few pages to a bit of basic sailing. There areplenty of good instructional books devoted entirely to sailing smallboats, and most of their information also applies to canoe sailing. I rec-ommend that new sailors read one or two of these books. For our pur-poses, I will provide a simplified, quick course, more as a means ofunderstanding the performance and use of different types of canoe sailsthan as an attempt to teach the finer points of sailing.

Picture yourself standing on the south shore of Paddler’s Pond, hav-ing just finished assembling the rig of your sailing canoe. Conveniently,the wind on the pond is always from the north, so you’re currently onthe downwind side of the lake.

The first objective is to get aboard the canoe and sail to the PollywogCafe, which sits on the north shore, for lunch. If we push off and pointthe canoe due north, not much happens. The sail flaps in the breeze, likea flag, and the boat drifts backwards. It’s not until we “bear off,” alteringour heading about 45 degrees, to either northeast or northwest, that thesail fills with wind and the canoe starts to move forward.

We have just learned the first important rule of sailing: No sailboatcan sail directly upwind. Depending on boat design and sail type, therewill be a limit to how close to the wind direction you can sail, or howhigh you can “point,” as sailors call it. Some boat/rig combinations pointhigher than others, but 45 degrees off the wind is fairly typical for gen-eral-purpose sailing craft.

We will make lunch, but to get there we will have to sail a zigzagcourse, heading northeast, then “tacking” to a northwest heading, andthen back to northeast, and so on. We will sail “close-hauled,” with thesail trimmed in tightly, and feel our highest possible course by watchingthe sail. If the sail starts to “luff,” losing its shape, we have headed uptoo high and must bear off a bit before the boat stalls.

Once we have figured out how high we can point, we can makeanother test. Some boats will actually get you to lunch faster if you bearoff a bit more (that is, head east-northeast, or west-northwest), ease thesail out a little, and let her rip. You will have to travel farther at theselower angles of attack, but the extra speed may make up for the extra

Make it Go!

distance. Most catamarans and other multihulls, for example, slow downif they are pointed too high, but they will really move at a lower angle.Many sailing canoes share this feature.

Sailboats that point high and go fast tend to have tall, narrow sailplans. Some of the best will point well into the 30-to-40-degree rangeand still maintain their speed. We’ve already established that a canoe isn’ta very good platform for trying to counterbalance a tall sail, so with ourlower rig we may, indeed, find that a shallower angle of attack and tak-ing the scenic route will get us there in time to get a table by the win-dow.

We can work our way upwind with a series of short zigs and zagswith many tacks, or a few long ones with fewer tacks. It takes the canoea while to get back up to speed after a tack, so the less tacking the bet-ter, if we want to beat the lunch rush.

It’s also handy to know that today, when we are sailing with a north-westerly heading, we are on the “starboard tack.” The wind from thenorth is coming in over the starboard (right) side of the canoe. By nauti-cal rule, this gives us the right-of-way over sailing craft on the “porttack.” (However, if a 160-foot-long schooner happens to be coming atyou on the port tack — don’t push your luck.)

Should we zag back to our northeasterly heading, the wind will becoming in over the port (left) side of the boat and we will be on the porttack — losing the right-of-way to any boats on the starboard tack.

So far, the wind has been steady and straight out of the north.However, it isn’t always so predictable out here on the pond. Frommoment to moment, both the wind’s speed and its direction will vary abit. Learning to play the directional shifts, in particular, is something thatmakes a good sailor.

Picture yourself going for lunch on the starboard tack, heading north-west, the wind due north. If the wind were to shift from due north tonortheast for a couple of minutes, we could change our heading tostraight north — straight towards Pollywog’s — and still maintain thesame pointing angle in relation to the wind direction. As long as thewind stayed shifted, we could, too.

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A wind shift such as this, which allows you to change your heading toa closer course to your intended goal, is called a “lift.” Should the windshift back to due north, we would bear off to keep the sails full, back toour northwesterly course. Using lifts, when they happen, makes the tripshorter.

On the other hand, had we been on the port tack, heading northeast,when the wind direction shifted from north to northeast, we would havefound our canoe pointing directly into the wind and stalling fast. Tokeep moving and maintain our proper pointing angle, we would havehad to alter course to due east.

Once we have reestablished our boat-heading to wind-direction angle,we will be fine, headed east. East?...but lunch is north. East is taking usfarther away from where we want to go. This is called a “header.” Beingheaded makes your trip longer.

But we can fix this easily. All we have to do is tack. Remember, thenortheasterly shift that is heading us on the port tack was a lift on thestarboard tack — a lift that will take us directly to our destination!

After a couple of frogburgers at the Pollywog Cafe, we’re ready tosail again. Our wind is still out of the north. Before we head home, let’scheck out the east and west ends of the lake. Our course will be perpen-dicular to the wind direction and is called a “reach.” Actually, there arethree types of reaches, and they are all pretty fast and fun to sail.

A “beam reach” is square to the wind; in this case, a straight east-westtrack, and can be sailed in either direction. A “close reach” is similar, butslightly upwind. We will be sailing an easterly or westerly course, butalso angling northward a bit in the process — not as high as we werewhen we sailed close-hauled to get up to this end of the lake, but wecan still make some upwind progress.

Since we’re already at the north end of the pond, we might choose a“broad reach” instead. Rather than just heading east or west, a broadreach will put us on a southeasterly or southwesterly course. We will beheading home but via an indirect route, with side trips to the east andthe west sides of the pond.

To sail any reach, the sails are eased out a bit. The trimmed-in-tightmode that we used coming upwind will tend to stall the boat and heel itover on a reach. The sails, when eased, can develop maximum aerody-namic lift (sails are airfoils, just like a wing). The lift is formed on theconvex, downwind side of the sail; easing the sail helps aim that liftingforce so it is pulling the boat forward. Rather than using our airfoil tofight its way upwind, we can now use it to generate maximum speed.

On a close reach, the sail might be trimmed almost as much as it waswhen sailing close-hauled. On a broad reach it would be eased out asmuch as 45 to 50 degrees from the centerline of the canoe, and on abeam reach it would be somewhere in between.

One way to determine how much to let the sails out on any reach isto ease the mainsheet (the line controlling the sail) until the sail starts toflutter, then trim the sheet in just enough for the sail to fill and startaccelerating the canoe.

Just as we did when sailing up the lake, we can zigzag our way back,linking easterly and westerly reaches. On close reaches, we can tack,swinging the bow into, and then past, the oncoming wind and onto our

Get Back!new heading. We can also tack to change a beam reach from an easterlyto a westerly heading, but we might want to “jibe” instead.

A jibe is a directional turn, like a tack, but the boat is steered awayfrom the wind, so that the wind crosses the stern instead of the bow.

For example, if you are sailing straight east, with a north wind (youare on a beam reach), and decide to make a U-turn and head west, youcould turn to the left (north or upwind — a tack), or turn to the right(south or downwind — a jibe). A jibe usually slows the boat less than atack and might, thus, be preferred.

If we were angling downwind, sailing a broad reach, the boat wouldalready be pointed somewhat downwind, due to our heading. It wouldbe much more efficient to jibe than to tack, which would require makinga looping 270-degree turn onto our new heading.

In high winds, jibing can be pretty exciting. As the wind catches thesail from behind, the boom can swing across very quickly and with a lotof force (that’s probably why it’s called a boom). There can be a momen-tary, wild ride as you get the boat under control on its new heading. Ifyou find yourself in windy conditions and a jibe might be a bit hairy,tack instead.

Tacking slows the boat and is much gentler than jibing, even thoughyou may be making a loop instead of a direct turn to your new heading.Tacking is easier on both you and your equipment; any sailor who claimshe has never tacked when he might have jibed is lying.

While working your way back on a broad reach, there is one head-ing/sail-trim configuration that should be avoided: “sailing by the lee.” Ifwe were headed southeast, for example, we could let the sail out oneither side of the boat until it filled, and the boat would go. But lettingit out over the port (left, and also upwind) side is asking for trouble. Allit would take is a slight wind shift (to the northeast in this case) to putthe wind directly behind the sail. In such an event, before the boat willeven slow down, the sail will flutter, the boom will lift a bit, and the sailand boom will come flying across to the starboard side of the canoe,pulverizing anything that gets in their way — particularly, your head.

To avoid the potential hospital bills involved with sailing by the lee,always do your downwind sailing with the boom on the side of thecanoe that is AWAY from the wind (south side in this example). Thatway, it would take a monster wind shift to get behind the sail and giveyou a headache.

While reaching, just as while sailing upwind, we can take advantage ofwind shifts to get to our destination faster, but it’s a little different inconcept. We can already make drastic changes in heading by aiming theboat and adjusting the sail to whatever reach it happens to be, so we usethe shifts for speed.

If our particular canoe sails fastest on a beam reach, pointed east orwest, a wind shift might allow us to stay on a beam reach but actually beheaded more upwind or downwind, depending on where we want to go.Just as we saw when going upwind, a shift will either put us on a moredirect course to our goal, or on one that takes us farther from it. Tackingor jibing to the favored heading may be the best choice if you think theshift is going to last for a few minutes.

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Close-hauled

Close reach

Beam reach

Broad reach Run

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Close-hauled

Close reach

Beam reach

Broad reachRun

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\\Starboard Tack Port TackSailing Angles Sailing Angles

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An increase in wind speed (velocity shift) can also occur from time totime. At first, it will seem like a change in wind direction. This is becausethe breeze that we feel and react to while sailing is a combination of thetrue wind direction and the boat’s heading, as the boat moves throughthe wind. This is called the “apparent wind.”

If our wind is from the north and our canoe is sailing toward thewest, the wind that we feel, the wind that the sails and the telltales (thesmall streamers attached to the sail) respond to, will appear to come fromsomewhere between north and west. If we could stop the boat andcheck the wind, we would find that it was still from the north, but as westarted sailing again, it would again seem to shift slightly westerly. Thefaster our boat moves, the more westerly our north wind would appear tobe.

Iceboats, the fastest sailing craft, can sail many times the speed of thewind propelling them. So fast are these boats that the apparent wind isalways blowing in your face (and it’s really cold, believe me). Since regu-lar sailboats and canoes have to move rather slowly through the water incomparison to iceboats, which skate across a frozen surface, their appar-ent wind will never shift to the bow of the boat, but it will shift some-what.

A puff of faster wind — the velocity shift mentioned earlier — canchange the apparent wind that both we and the sailboat feel withoutchanging the true wind’s direction. Since the apparent wind is an averageof true wind and canoe movement, skewed by the relative speeds ofboth, changing the true wind speed will change the equation. The boat,in turn, may also speed up, because it’s getting more wind/power/aero-dynamic lift.

Perhaps having to deal with all this is the real reason for the inventionof the outboard motor! Don’t worry, you will either get the hang ofchanging apparent wind or learn to ignore it. I know many diehardsailors who wouldn’t be able to define apparent wind to save their lives.

The important and surprisingly simple lesson here is that an increasein velocity — a change in the apparent wind — will at first seem like ashift in wind direction. Don’t be too quick to tack or jibe. Wait a fewseconds and then decide whether it’s really a directional shift, requiring

action, or just a puff that will eventually give you a bit more speed.

What if we had left Pollywog’s and our frogburger wasn’t sitting toowell, and all we wanted to do was get back to the car and seek medicalattention? We have already learned that a sailboat can’t sail straightupwind, but it CAN sail straight downwind! We could lie in the bottomof the boat moaning, point the bow due south, let the sail out 90degrees to the line of the keel, and sail home. This is called “running.”

Running is usually rather slow and peaceful. The wind that you andthe boat feel is the actual wind speed, minus your boat speed.Sometimes, after a windy, spray-filled, upwind leg, turning and runningdownwind feels as if you came out on an entirely different day.

Here again, boat/sail-rig configuration will determine the actual effi-ciency of running. It’s quite possible in some boats that you may get tothe ambulance more quickly by using your sail more as an airfoil, broad-reaching back and forth to go south, than just running straight down,where the sail acts more like a windsock.

Some of the sails now used on canoes and kayaks, and some in thisbook, are downwind sails only. They can usually be sailed as “high” as abroad reach, but that’s about it. They are common for tripping, as theystow easily, and can be used instead of paddles when you are luckyenough to have a favoring breeze.

Obviously, in real life, the wind isn’t always out of the north, butthese basic sailing principles are the same when the wind blows from anydirection.

Port/Starboard SituationsTwo canoes sailing to weather on opposite tacks. The boat on the

starboard tack, the green one, has the right of way. The red boat musteither tack below green to avoid a collision, or it must bear off and duckthe stern of green, resuming the previous course on the port tack whengreen has cleared.

If red tacks below green to starboard, she will be sailing indisturbed air from green’s sail and will probably slow down. Ifred can manage to stay with green and overlap her, red wouldgain the right of way, being the boat farthest away from thewind. If red can then point higher than green, green will proba-bly have to tack away. This is a common racing move, but not

very friendly for daysailing.

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Remember: Short words—Port, Red, & Left—go togetheras do the longer words—Starboard, Green & Right

Starboard tack has right-of-way

Porttack m

ust yield

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Tacking and JibingThis canoe is sailing

on a close-hauledcourse, pointing as highas possible, with anorth wind. Forty-fivedegrees off the windis about as close asmost sailboats willsail, so our actualcourse on this tackis northeasterly.

A fairly smallwesterly shift inwind directionallows us tochange our head-

ing — closer to ourdesired northern objective

while still maintaining thesame angle to the direction

of the wind. We save time andgain distance to weather for as

long as the shift lasts. This iscalled a “lift.”

A shift in an easterlydirection means we haveto bear off to keep oursails full. Our newcourse is making ourtrip longer. This is a“header.” We wouldbe advised to tack.On the other tack, asshown by the yel-low boat, the head-er becomes a liftand saves us time.

45 degrees to the wind

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WIND

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Windshifts

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Tacking while sailing to weather Jibing while broad reaching

1

2

3 1

2

3

Where Wind and Water Meet - 1312 - Where Wind and Water Meet

The “Forced-Cross”During one of my more interesting, if not profitable, careers, I

worked as a professional hot-air balloon pilot. I flew a giant tomato overcollege football stadiums for a chain of pizza places. Since I didn’t haveany money at the time, I was forced to do almost all of my sailing in aSunfish owned by my brother, who had conveniently moved to thedesert and left the boat where there was water.

The sail was pretty bad, so I built a new one out of better fabric andhad its shape computer-plotted with the day’s most advanced sail-designsoftware. The sail is black, with a hot-pink and lime-green star-cut panellayout. It is probably one of the most high-tech lateen sails ever builtand still sails well.

Having nothing else, I sailed that boat in all kinds of wind and waves,and was always amazed by its heavy-weather capabilities. On reallywindy days, I would modify the halyard to what was called a “Jens rig,”named after a well-known Sunfish racer who had pioneered its use.

The Jens rig simply involves tying the halyard of a lateen sail so thatit’s lashed around the mast, holding the yard close to the mast before itgoes up to the halyard lead atop the mast, The entire sail is raised, but ina lower position than usual. This shortens the non-reefable lateen rig andreduces the heeling force on the boat.

Instead of meeting at the usual masthead location, the yard and mastcross 12 to 18 inches lower on the mast, and the boom just clears thedeck. The result, also workable in a canoe, is a more controllable boat inhigh winds.

One problem with Jens-rigging your boat for high winds is boomclearance. Most lateens are rigged with the mainsheet running along theunderside of the boom, so when tacking, if the boom doesn’t hit you,the temporarily free-hanging mainsheet might try to strangle you.

The Jens-rigged lateen is not the only small-boat sailing rig with thisproblem. The mainsheet can hang up on your lifejacket or the low boomcan come across at high speed during a jibe; both possibilities can beannoying and dangerous. To avoid this some sailors will hang the rig sohigh that they can nearly walk under it, but those with more experiencewill know the benefits of a keeping it down where it belongs.

One of the first obvious conclusions about rigs that canoe sailorsarrive at is that anything that will contribute to the stability of a 3-foot-wide unballasted sailboat is worth fitting. It greatly outweighs the draw-backs of getting hit in the head or strangled, as long as you can find ameans of controlling the risks.

This brings us to what I call the “forced cross,” though it really isn’tforced, but rather eased. I use a forced cross when I tack and jibe smallboats and even when high-wind-jibing our big trimaran. I don’t know ifanybody else uses the technique, but most canoe sailors should get in thehabit. It’s easy, it’s controlled, and it works.

This seems like a lot of buildup for simply grabbing the boom andthe mainsheet hanging from it and bringing them across by hand, beforethey can bonk or strangle you, but that’s it!

At a certain point, during any tack or jibe, the sail begins to luff andthe tension on the boom and sheet disappears. During that brief timeyou can grab the boom and sheet in one hand and swing them over yourhead to the new side. You can even lift them a bit over your head ifclearance is tight.

The forced cross takes less than a second. Then you’re ready to con-centrate on finishing the tack — without having to wait, ducked downin the bottom of the canoe, for the boom and sheet to wander over or,in the case of a high-wind jibe, to come flying across.

You can’t rush a forced cross. If the sail is still catching wind, it mayresist mightily, but if you learn when to act, the maneuver will be quitesmooth.

Since we aren’t bound by class racing rules, we can improve on theJens rig by tying a loop of line to the upper spar instead of using thehalyard for that and for raising the sail, too. The loop should be largeenough for the mast to pass through it, yet small enough to keep theyard close to the mast. The Jens rig makes lowering the sail a real chore.Our rope loop is much faster to untie.

Jens-Rigging a Lateen Sail

Regular LateenConfiguration

Jen’s-Rigged LateenConfiguration

Improved Version

Halyard

Rope loop tiedto yard

Clove hitch,rolling hitch,or topsail halyard bend