Points of Sail

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This is a points of sail animation for teaching kids how to sail a dinghy. This animation will be in our upcoming dinghy sailing ibook.

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Essential Reefing a Sailboat Tips

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A good sailing tip would be to reef your boat early before the wind hits but even more essential reefing tips are embedded in this recent sailing event in Sydney Harbour, Australia. You can’t visit Sydney with out a sailing trip out on the harbour and Matt Hayes, owner of Sydney by Sail charter company […]

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Reefing a Sailboat – HTML5 Animations

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Just posting here some fun and helpful animations of reefing the sails. The animation below represents where sails must be lowered. In the case of the headsail, it needs to be replaced with a smaller sail. Remember, the higher the number, the smaller the sail. This specific one represents where the boat is fitted with […]

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How to gybe with a dipping pole

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Last week we were out on a Beneteau First 45 to participate in a local regatta race series. Until now I’d been working the main and Genoa but this week I wanted to step up and run the spinnaker sheet. Not usually a problem because I’ve done it plenty of times before … but this […]

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How to Pull on a Line

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Here’s a quicky sailing tip that isn’t documented in too many places. And you might think it’s a bit basic but I’ve even seen old time sailing instructors doing this the wrong way. One day their luck is going to run out. Fortunately we got to you just in time. I was out racing last […]

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When to reef a sailboat

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While all sailboat designs are different and will sail optimally at different heel angles and reef points, there are a few generalities that we’ll cover in this sailing blog. General reefing point number 1 through infinity: Don’t scare the beegeebees out of those on board by heeling the boat over too much. While you may […]

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Reefing a Catamaran

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Here’s a question from a student. >>>>>>> Grant, I would like some clarification on the steps taken to reef a main sail on a cat.  I’m going out on a 48ft cat and prob want to reef the sail before i go out…. Do i reef it while at the dock or in the water […]

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More about Heaving-to in a sailboat

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This is an add on to the last post we did on heaving to. I was looking over our Storm Tactics online sailing course and found this image we created which best shows a boat in a heave-to situation in a storm. They say a pic is worth a thousand words so with this blog […]

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