![]() And, when I do this, if there’s much wind at all, I am moving along at a pretty good clip. I think of it as “I’ve hauled the boat’s mainsail as close to the edge of the wind, and the line from the center of the clock out to the two position. Certain styles of boats may be better equipped to leverage the wind situation, but no sail is able to sail directly into the wind. While all sailboats’ behavior varies in different wind conditions, every sailboat needs wind to move in a captain-determined direction. All this is to say, I’m probably not the best person to explain the actual physics behind sailing close to the wind however, I can suggest that you google “the physics of sailing.” There you will find at least a half-dozen videos in the four to ten-minute range that are interesting and helpful, and at least to those folks who are interested in the myriad ways that physics are involved with sailing. I took physics in college, and “Football Physics” (with all the jocks), and, while I enjoyed the stories about good ol’ Sir Isaac Newton, it was all I could do to scrape a low B out of my time and effort. brain discussions involve words like lift, velocity, deviation, force. If there is a crew on board, they’ll be asked to “lean out” and push as much weight as possible on the high side of the boat, to counteract the tipping point.Ĭandidly, there are complex (at least for me) physics explanations regarding how the boat’s sail and the wind’s direction interact. ![]() To discourage this tendency, skippers will want to put extra weight on the windward side to help keep the boat upright. It’s also a somewhat risky point of sail to be in because, since you’re moving along quite quickly, the boat will tend to tip. When sailing close to the wind, you are probably moving along at a pretty good clip. I’ve hauled it in from the broad reach position to where the boom is hauled closely to the middle of the boat, very very close to me, the skipper. When I was first learning to sail in my teens, I thought of close hauled like this: “I’ve hauled the boat’s mainsail close to the edge of the wind. The wind is coming across either the port or starboard side, the boom is pretty much amidships, and via the mainsheet and jib sheet, the mainsail and jib are pulled in tight, parallel to the centerline of the boat. It is right there on the edge of the No-Go Zone. Now, on either side of the No-Go Zone point of sail, to the right of the 2 o’clock and to the left of the 10 o’clock, is the Close-Hauled point of sail. You are not going where you want to go, and you are going wherever it is that the current wants to take you. ![]() That’s why it’s called the No-Go Zone point of sail. This is not where we want to be, and because you’re not sailing anymore, you’re merely drifting. We’d be sailing into the wind, and that’s just not possible.Ī boat in this position, again known as the No-Go Zone, is also considered in irons. If our boat wanted to sail from the center of the clock up to the 12 o’clock slot, hopefully we all realize that our boat just can’t do that, and because we’ve said that the wind was blowing toward the boat from the 12 o’clock position. Our boat is at the center of the clock (where the hands are attached). It is the pie-shaped wedge between about 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock. If we use a clock analogy (with the wind blowing down from the 12 o’clock position), the No-Go Zone point of sail is at the top of the clock. Today, we’ll consider two of those, and the No-Go Zone and Close Hauled. The No-Go Zone and Sailing Close to the Wind Tackling the finickiest of all of the points of sail, and sailing close to the wind is mighty finicky, requires understanding the concept of being close hauled, paying attention to certain tale-telling details, and knowing the nuances of the boat on which you’re sailing. You can be going merrily along and suddenly find yourself at almost a dead stop within a matter of seconds. Close hauled is really living on the edge, and on the edge of the wind, that is. It’s an exciting point of sail, and because of the potential for speed as well as for the temperamental aspect of it. In this article, I’m going to do my darndest to illustrate what sailing close to the wind means and why it is a situation with which you’ll want to become very familiar. Most every sailor knows that you can’t sail directly into the wind, but you can sail right next to the edge of the wind, and that’s what we mean by close hauled. In this situation, you are just shy of heading directly into the wind. Probably the most challenging of the various points of sail is sailing close to the wind or close hauled. The importance? The difference between sailing fast or not sailing at all.
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