Hi again, and welcome to lesson 4.
The book ‘Swallows and Amazons’ starts with a boy running over a field into the wind and zigzagging to imitate a boat sailing to windward.
When you are having your permitted exercise walk, you could also practise the sailing ‘rules of the road’ to help distancing.
Simplified then
Overtaking boat (person) keeps clear
Steam (bikes, scooters and runners) keep clear of sail (walkers and prams)
Boats passing port (left hand) to port
Boats to windward keep clear (droplets are windborn)
Stay alert, stay safe
This week, let’s think about rigging
There are several You Tube clips but this one covers most of it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dj0pHoH4dg
Couple of points:
1 Always rig head to wind
2 Our jib halyard has a wire eye so doesn’t need the knots, also don’t tension it too much as that makes the reefing stiff. This mainsail is new to me but good!
3 After rigging furl or reef the jib till you get on the water, then tighten it as hard as you can
4 Don’t take off the forestay in case you forget to put it back on
5 We used to teach ‘check bungs, battens and buoyancy Before you launch
6 Good point about leaving the transom cover open till hull cools down, but again risky so maybe don’t
Sailors’ saying
Swinging the lead is pretending to do this properly to save effort
Instructors
Garrie Mallen loves doing capsize recovery
Yachtmasters Quiz
A2.5 Magnetic variation 5 15’ West in 2000 , annual change 12’ East ie variation is decreasing 12’ annually
Q 2.6 Which of these is not a recognised international distress signal
aEnsign upside down b continuous sounding of foghorn c square flag over ball
d red parachute flare
Incompetent crew
Sunday 9th set off at 6am after a big breakfast heading ENE into the wind .
Having sailed outside the chain of islands we got to the mouth of the Weser at about 2pm this being low tide we had the tide behind us all the way to Bremerhaven
As we said at the start, feel free to ask if you don’t understand anything
Sailing can be fun
Eric Finlayson
PS for a laugh, find Captain Ron on Sony Movies or catchup
Pops predictive text plays havoc with sailing terms!