Learning to sail in gusty conditions

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Yesterday I was out teaching on our new Beneteau 373. The conditions were extremely gusty. Lake Travis in Austin Texas is a great lake for sailing all year round and in the summer the water is so incredibly warm that you can swim while anchored in a cove still at 2am. There are lots of […]

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Further elaboration of true vs apparent wind

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There has been a request for further elaboration of the wind vectors as to why the true wind is always behind the apparent wind. Previously we used this diagram and the confusion is that the true wind vector is in front of the apparent wind vector. The following diagram explains the vectors better perhaps. The […]

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Understanding true vs apparent wind

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Here is an easy description of true wind and apparent wind. Put you hand outside the window of your car traveling at 60 miles per hour on a still day and your hand will feel a 60 mile per hour wind. That’s apparent wind yet the true wind is zero. What if the car was […]

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Sailboat Rigging and Some Nomenclature

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Learning to sail can be a bit overwhelming at the start because of the nomenclature. But don’t worry it’s just a matter of learning a few at the start then adding to them as you progress in your sailing education. The following illustration shows the parts of the sail and associated control lines. Of note […]

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Learn to Sail

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Just how hard is it to learn to sail. I meet people on airplanes all the time and their comment is many times “sailing? Isn’t that hard”. Well, was it hard learning to ride a bike? Kinda. Is it easy riding a bike now? well … yes. So learning to sail is similar. There are […]

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Moving the car forward under tension

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Moving the jib sheet car forward when the jib sheet is under tension presents a bit of a problem and many times you’ll just wait until you tack to the other side to move it. Or more dangerously, you can release the tension a little then put your foot on the jibsheet forward of the […]

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Reef un reef reef unreef

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When you’re racing you need to get the most out of your rig and that’s exactly what we had to do in the Austin Yacht Club Red Eye January 1st Race event. While one weather channel was predicting 6-8 knots another was saying 15-20. In the last sailing blog I’d mentioned that we were going […]

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Happy New Year – learn to sail in light winds

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What better way for NauticEd online sailing classes to start off the year by going sailing. The NauticEd crew will be racing their Beneteau 373 on lake Travis in the Red eye regatta today. Winds are predicted to be light at 6-10mph. So it’s going to be a light wind sailing day. Light wind sailing […]

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Reefing

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After a cold front came through last week we decided to go out sailing – hey it’s Texas we can still sail this time of the year. The wind was up 20-25 knots. The not so great thing about sailing on Lake Travis in Austin however is the high hills and valleys surrounding it tend […]

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