100 Sailing Mistakes & How To Avoid Them - Bennett MarineShow Video Details ↓ [silence] …Capt. Pete Wodraska: Hi I'm Captain Pete, I'm with Reef Runner Sailing here in Panama City, Florida. Were an ASA certified sailing school and today were going to be talking about 100 mistakes while sailing and how to avoid them. Our objective is going to be to illustrate these mistakes and give you some tips on how to avoid these in a real situation. We hope you enjoy the following video. [music] … … … … … … … … … Learning from your mistakes is definitely the hard way to go about sailing. Doing things right is sometimes just a matter of not doing things wrong. Mistakes made purchasing, operating and maintaining sailboats can be costly. Really costly. You're much better off avoiding mistakes in the first place. Here's a hundred mistakes you can make and how you can avoid them. Tacking is simply changing the direction in which your sailboat is headed and it's one of the most basic principles of getting from one point to another. Simple as it is, there are a lot of things that can go wrong unless you understand the process of actually tacking a sailboat. We're going to show you some of the mistakes in this segment so that, again, we hope you don't duplicate those on your own sailboat. Narrator: You've purchased a sailboat but you really don't know how to sail. Needless to say, after a few months of experimentation you're still learning the hard way. If you're a beginner, start out by taking a course from a sailing school. The small expense and time devoted will be well worth it. Make certain the school has instructors certified by an internationally recognized organization such as the American Sailing Association or US sailing and are also US Coast Guard licensed captains. Your sailboat becomes over powered by high winds and approaching storms. You shouldn't have been out there in the first place. Sail only in conditions that you can handle safely and were trained under. Monitor local weather reports very closely and pick your date of sail where wind, sea, and traffic conditions are familiar to you. Practice heavier weather sailing tactics such as reefing using lifelines and harnesses, heaving too and using sea anchors in moderate conditions to prepare yourself for more challenging days. You stall on the irons because your turn was sloppy due a foul jibe sheet or perhaps not enough head way to complete the maneuver. If in irons, back wind the jibe and keep the tiller to the opposite side you wish to go. The back winded jibe will bring the bow through the wind and then you can trim the sheets and get under way. You execute a jibe while running and the boom comes over so fast that it hits a crew member and damages the rigging. Jibes are a safe method of turning the sailboat while on a run if the specific attention is paid to the boom before coming through the wind. Sheet in the main sheet until the boom is centered before you turn through the wind. And then as soon as the boom travel a few inches available after the wind crosses, it's then safe to let the main sheet out to the appropriate angle to continue sailing. The wind pushes your boom across the boat unexpectedly and almost knocks you out of the boat. This can occur anytime you're sailing on a run and the wind shifts to the other side of the main sail due to an error by an helmsman or a sudden shift in the wind direction. If you watch the wind direction and your sails, you can avoid this. The jibe will usually begin the lift prior to an unexpected jibe. Watch it carefully and correct your course quickly to fend off the accidental jibe. Wind indicators such as tell tales can also warn you. You attempt to tack without communicating to your crew and havoc is created. [silence] … |