Turn, Stop and Rebalance

A reduced sail still has to answer a changing wind. Its reinforced corners may be properly secured and its loose cloth gathered, yet a turn can make a useful setting wrong in seconds. The boat keeps moving while its sails, rudder and underwater surfaces encounter new directions of flow.

The crew can use that interval to change tack, reduce progress or alter the boat’s balance. Each action depends on which forces remain and where they act.

The wind changes before the turn is finished

Keep the water-relative true-wind reference used earlier. During a turn, heading and velocity change together, but not necessarily at the same rate. The apparent wind follows the boat’s actual motion through the air, while leeway separates its bow direction from its track through the water. The sail therefore meets a changing flow throughout the turn.

Start close-hauled and bear away, or bear off. The older instruction to bear up describes that same movement away from the wind. As the bow turns through a close reach, beam reach and broad reach towards a run, the true wind angle increases. Those successive points of sail describe the changing heading. They do not prescribe the apparent wind angle or the sheet setting at every instant. Acceleration on the reach can bring apparent wind forwards even while the bow points farther away from true wind.

The weather can change independently. A gust increases the incoming air’s speed; a lull reduces it. A wind shift changes its direction. For a close-hauled boat, a header may require bearing away to keep the sail drawing, while a lift permits heading farther towards the upwind destination. Neither shift proves that the helmsman has turned the boat. A wind gradient can meanwhile give the sail’s upper and lower regions different apparent directions, so twist remains useful during the adjustment.

Sail trim therefore follows the changing airflow and the desired behaviour. Easing, or sheeting out, allows a loaded sheet to run under control; sheeting in, or hauling in, increases its restraint. Keeping the same rope mark through every turn does not keep the same sail-to-flow angle. Even a perfectly retained setting answers only one part of the changing situation.

Current adds the water’s movement relative to land. It can carry the whole turn sideways over the ground without being a wind shift or leeway. A boat may complete an orderly water-relative manoeuvre while ending much closer to the shore than its headings alone suggest.

Carry motion through the tack

When beating, or working to windward, the boat alternates close-hauled legs. Each leg is a tack; the manoeuvre between them is also called a tack. Consider a change from port tack to starboard tack. The bow passes through the true-wind direction, and the wind eventually reaches the opposite side. Port and starboard remain fixed sides of the hull; their weather and lee roles change.

As the bow approaches the no-go zone, the sails lose their ordinary driving arrangement. The instruction to luff up means to head towards the wind; a luffing sail describes the fluttering cloth that can result as its forward region loses steady filling. The airflow has not disappeared. A boat still moving towards the wind may meet substantial apparent air while being unable to turn it into the forward drive needed for steady sailing.

Momentum carries the hull onwards while resistance slows it and the remaining forces turn it. Compare two boats moving at the same speed in the same direction, one with twice the mass of the other. The heavier boat has twice the momentum. The same net force acting for the same time would change their momenta by the same amount, but change the heavier boat’s velocity less. That is its greater inertia in this comparison. Actual hull resistance, steering force and mass distribution differ too, so mass alone cannot tell us which boat will complete the turn more readily.

The headsail’s attachments must permit the change. In the Navy 44’s ordinary tack, the crew eases the old loaded jib sheet as the sail luffs and takes up the sheet on the new lee side as the bow turns through. The old working sheet becomes lazy; the old lazy sheet becomes the working sheet. The head remains supported by the halyard and the luff by its established attachments, while the clew changes sides. Taking in the new sheet too early can hold the sail across the incoming air and oppose the intended turn. The Navy’s dated manoeuvre account describes the coordinated jobs of steering and sheet handling.

A self-tacking jib changes that lower connection automatically within its designed travel. Its clew’s sheet load moves the traveller car across the forward track as the sail crosses. The track and its end attachments receive the moving reaction. A self-tending sail thus reduces the separate side-to-side sheet transfer, but its single retained sheet can still need a new setting for the changed course and apparent wind. The car’s freedom to cross and the sheet’s chosen length answer different requirements.

Move the boom while it can still be loaded

A gybe, or jibe, takes the stern through the true-wind direction and transfers the sail to the other side. Approach it from a broad reach through a run. A dead run puts the defined true wind directly astern. On an ordinary slower yacht the apparent wind commonly comes from aft during this passage, so the sail may retain substantial pressure while its boom crosses. A fast boat can keep its apparent wind forward through a gybe. The stern’s crossing is defined against true wind; the actual loading still follows apparent airflow at the sail.

In a controlled gybe, the crew manages the turn and the boom’s movement together. The Navy 44 example brings the main boom towards the centre with the mainsheet before the stern crosses, then eases the sheet as the sail settles on the new side. Bringing the boom in reduces the distance it can sweep freely; controlling the outgoing sheet manages the remaining movement. Any restraint holding it on the old side has to permit that planned transfer. These are coordinated physical jobs, with the crew clear of the boom and loaded lines.

An accidental gybe is an unintended crossing. A course change or wind shift can put pressure on the sail’s other face before the crew is ready. The boom can accelerate across a wide arc, and the sheet and its attachments must then absorb a rapidly changing load. The sail’s passage can also disturb the yacht’s heading and heel, changing the airflow again.

The sail need not cross as soon as the wind changes sides. Imagine a conventional downwind boat with the main boom extended to port. If the apparent air begins arriving from the port quarter while the boom remains there, the boat is sailing by the lee: the wind approaches from the same side as the extended boom. A slight heading change or wind shift can create this geometry. It identifies the arrangement before a possible crossing, rather than naming a gybe that has already happened. The Dashews’ by-the-lee comparison, page 105, follows that changed side of approach.

Goosewinged, or wing-and-wing, sails make the side relationships particularly visible. The main is spread to one side and the headsail to the other. A changing heading can let one sail lose its useful presentation while the other remains loaded. As the main and headsail move relative to the air, the main’s wind shadow can also reach a different part of the forward sail. Opposite-side spread is a supported arrangement, not a guarantee that both sails keep drawing through a turn.

Give the boom a deliberate restraint

A preventer provides a load path arranged to oppose an unintended boom swing across the boat. In the Navy 44’s system, the working side connects to a strong mooring cleat at the bow, outside the shrouds and deck-edge posts. Its line reaches an aft boom sheave, runs internally towards the opposite forward boom sheave near the gooseneck, and returns through a mast-base block to a cabin-top winch. The forward attachment and boom connection hold a triangle whose tension opposes the boom’s inward swing.

The boom pulls on the rope; the bow fitting and deck-mounted control receive the corresponding reactions. The fitted line must be eased for an intended gybe and the new side restrained afterwards. If the sail is pressed from its other face while the preventer stays secured, that restraint retains a loaded boom. It does not remove the sail force or make the whole yacht immune to being turned. Its attachments, clearance and controlled release under the actual load are therefore part of the system. Navy 44 preventer arrangement, section 1-5.9.

A boom brake resists movement while permitting the boom to travel. Wichard’s Gyb’Easy hangs a plate beneath the boom, aft of the vang. In its recommended installation, a rope runs from a cockpit control through a block at one side’s chainplate, bends through the plate, then passes through the opposite side block to the other cockpit control. As the boom moves, rope slides against the plate. Friction opposes the movement; rope tension and the selected bends alter that resistance. The side blocks return the rope’s reactions into the hull. Wichard’s installation manual shows this route.

The secured preventer holds the boom against crossing; this brake controls travel through a sliding, frictional contact. Either still belongs to a sail, spar and hull carrying changing loads. A brake setting does not by itself plan the turn or guarantee that every crossing will be slow.

The boom vang has another direction to control. The tensioned tackle below the boom, also called the kicker or kicking strap, restrains rise while allowing the permitted swing about the mast. The RS500’s gnav instead uses the compression strut above the boom to press down on its slider. As the boom crosses, these connections have to accommodate its movement while retaining their particular vertical restraint. The spring-supported rigid vang can also hold up the boom’s weight when sail load diminishes. None of those jobs supplies the preventer’s forward-led restraint against an unintended crossing.

The mainsheet’s lower attachment matters too. On a traveller, the traveller car carries the sheet blocks across the track; its controls retain the chosen position. Moving that attachment changes the sheet’s direction of pull, whereas changing sheet tension alters the force along the existing route. In the RS500’s sheet-bridle arrangement, the sheet block hangs between rope legs attached at the two rear quarters. As the boom crosses, the sheet’s pull changes direction and the two legs’ load sharing changes with it. Their reactions enter the quarter attachments. The car and bridle accommodate the changing sheet load through different supports.

Transfer the flying sail’s corner jobs

With a symmetrical spinnaker set, the mainsail’s crossing is only part of the gybe. The spinnaker halyard continues to hold the head through its masthead turn. Below it, the old leeward corner becomes the new windward corner, and the old windward corner becomes the new leeward one. The sail changes its supported shape as those roles exchange.

Return to the Navy 44’s separate paired lines. The old lazy guy becomes the loaded spinnaker guy, or afterguy, led through the pole’s outer jaw and aft to its deck lead. It holds the new windward corner towards the pole end and opposes the pole’s forward movement. The formerly lazy sheet becomes the loaded spinnaker sheet at the new leeward corner, pulling through its stern-quarter lead. The previous working sheet and guy are eased as the new controls take their jobs. Calling a rope lazy describes its present loading; it does not remove its corner attachment or its need for a clear route.

The compressed pole must change sides as part of the transfer. Its pole lift, or pole uphaul, continues to supply an upward pull from the forward-mast sheave, while its foreguy supplies the downward and forward restraint that makes it a pole downhaul. Their lengths and leads must allow the selected pole movement. The end-for-end pole and the larger system that dips its outer end past the forestay achieve that transfer through different fittings. Keeping the head raised does not by itself support or relocate either lower corner.

The Corsair asymmetric keeps a distinct tack at the bow pole. Its tack line still pulls that corner towards the block at the pole’s end, while the halyard retains the head. The after clew crosses under the paired sheets: the old working sheet is eased and the new one draws the clew onto its new side. An inside gybe brings that movement through the gap ahead of the forestay and behind the tack; an outside gybe takes it around the tack too. Those are different prepared sheet routes. Here the clew changes sides while the tack keeps its forward job; the symmetric’s two lower corners exchanged jobs as well.

Reach the other tack by another route

The room needed for the turn is part of the choice. A lee shore lies downwind of the vessel: the wind is blowing towards that shore. Drift or a downwind excursion can consume the water between boat and land, leaving less room to restore progress or control. Current may reduce or increase that room independently. A successful change of heading alone does not settle the ground-relative outcome.

For a square-rigged ship, wearing ship changes tack by turning away from the wind, passing through a downwind heading and then coming up on the other side. It avoids asking the bow to cross the wind through the ordinary tacking route, but makes a greater excursion to leeward. The yards and sails must be worked around the changing air, not merely left at their original braced angles.

Dana’s 1847 account shows the coordination. In his ordinary wearing sequence the mainsail and spanker are gathered while the ship bears away. The after yards are adjusted as the wind moves towards the stern, with enough topsail drive retained for steering. With the wind aft, the foremast yards are squared. As it comes onto the new quarter, the after yards are braced for the new tack and the mainsail and spanker set again. The foremast sails are then trimmed as the bow comes up. Moving or removing particular sail forces helps the intended turn at each stage. Dana, chapter XI, “Wearing”.

The older word also appears in accounts of smaller rigs. Knight’s 1889 yawl, unable to complete a tack in choppy water, can “ware”: bear away, gybe and head up on the other side. That comparison explains the route, while Dana’s account supplies the square ship’s particular yard work. Neither makes the available room or the sail loads disappear.

Shunting changes which end of the craft leads. The Taumako canoe already encountered transfers its sail’s tack to the opposite end while keeping the outrigger to windward. A modern Harryproa achieves its reversal with a different arrangement: the longer leeward hull carries the rig and rudders, while the shorter hull stays windward. Sheets are released to remove drive, and rig and rudders turn for sailing in the opposite direction. The former stern becomes the new bow. This reverses the craft’s end roles instead of taking one permanent bow or stern through the wind. Harryproa’s shunting description and hull arrangement.

Unload the sail or put pressure on its other face

A boat need not change tack to reduce sail force. Feathering makes a brief reduction in effective angle of attack, commonly by heading a little higher while sailing upwind. For the stated sheet setting, the sail lies closer to the incoming flow and its forward region may begin to lift. Used during excess load, this can reduce the heeling force while the boat retains useful movement. The change must be judged through the sail’s actual response, because speed and apparent wind are changing too.

Continue too high for useful progress and the boat is pinching. The bow appears to point well towards the destination, but partly luffing sails supply too little drive. As speed falls, the underwater surfaces also work in a changed flow; increased leeway can spoil the apparent gain in heading. The terms can overlap when a sailor deliberately feathers close to this limit. The distinction is the short load adjustment versus the loss of useful progress being tolerated or avoided.

Footing chooses a slightly freer heading to recover speed rather than the highest pointing angle. The boat gives up some closeness of heading to the wind; the gain in movement may improve its actual progress through the water. In smooth water or chop the useful compromise can differ. North U’s feathering and footing comparison connects those choices to available sail power; the Cal Sailing manual, printed page 71, explicitly identifies pinching with sailing too close and partly luffing.

To spill wind is the handling expression for allowing some of the sail to unload. Easing a traveller can reduce the mainsail’s angle while retaining much of its leech restraint; easing the sheet with a suitable vang setting can let the boom out; allowing more twist can unload an upper region. Each changes how the air acts on cloth. The sail is not a container with a fixed quantity of wind inside it.

Luffing may begin as movement at the leading edge. Flogging is repeated violent flapping of loose sailcloth. Its changing folds and snaps repeatedly load the material and attachments, and prolonged flogging can damage them. Briefly reducing a sail’s force and leaving it to flog are different outcomes of losing steady support from the air. The preceding chapter’s gathering systems control loose cloth when taking a sail out of work. North Sails’ sail-care guidance identifies the damage caused by prolonged flogging and flutter.

A sail can also carry a substantial force on its normally opposite face. Backing a sail deliberately puts it in that arrangement; the sail is aback. Hold a headsail’s clew to the weather side instead of allowing it across, and the incoming air can press against the face that would normally lie to leeward. Its altered force can help turn the bow away from the wind or oppose the yacht’s forward progress. A filled backed sail, a loose flogging sail and a normally drawing sail therefore supply different force conditions.

Backwind also describes opposite-side disturbance, often local to the interaction between sails. A headsail can alter the airflow at the mainsail’s forward region enough to push that region inwards while much of the main remains usefully loaded. That does not necessarily mean the crew has deliberately backed the whole mainsail. Usage overlaps: some dinghy instruction also calls deliberate opposite-face loading backwinding. Identify the sail, region and intended action instead of assuming that the word alone settles them. Fernhurst’s genoa–main example supplies the local usage; the Cal Sailing manual supplies the deliberate one.

When the tack does not complete

The timing of a backed sail can help or hinder. In Knight’s yawl account, holding the inner foresail’s old sheet briefly to weather helps the bow turn onto the new tack. Bringing in the new jib sheet too early can instead oppose the unfinished turn. The sail’s position, the side receiving pressure and the stage of the manoeuvre determine its turning effect. “Set another sail” or “pull the sheet” is too little information to predict the result. Knight, Sailing, printed pages 60–62.

To miss stays is to fail to complete the intended tack. The period verb to stay meant to bring the bow through the wind; the phrase describes failure of that manoeuvre. It may leave the boat in irons: stopped or nearly stopped with the bow too close to the wind for its sails to provide their normal drive. Missing stays names the failed turn; in irons names the resulting state, which can also be reached by heading up and losing way without completing a planned tack.

With little forward motion through the water, the rudder has little of its usual steering flow. If the boat begins moving astern, the flow reverses and so does the effect of a given rudder angle. A deliberately backed headsail can still provide a turning force where ordinary forward drive has failed. Knight describes that use while easing the after sails that would oppose the bow’s movement away. Recovery depends on the actual boat and conditions; the important distinction is that lost headway does not mean every available force has vanished.

Arrange a slow balance

Backing can also be retained as part of a chosen slow state. To heave to is to set sail and steering forces in a relationship that leaves the vessel hove to, moving slowly and relatively steadily while drifting. In a common headsail-and-main arrangement, the backed headsail tends to push the bow away from the wind. The mainsail and the rudder’s action as the boat gains a little headway oppose that tendency and bring it towards the wind again.

The result can be a repeated small movement around a mean heading. As the bow comes up, drive and rudder flow diminish; the backed headsail can then push it away again. Suitable sail areas, sheet settings and rudder position differ among boats. This is an opposing balance involving both sails and water flow, rather than an in-irons boat with its sails simply shaking.

Duncan Wells’s 2011 trials demonstrate the variation in modest conditions. The three boats had different underwater arrangements: a Hallberg-Rassy 352 retained more headway than the tested Westerly Centaur and Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 36i. The trials took place in a variable light-to-moderate breeze and calm water. They show that boats can share a named state while differing in motion; they do not establish how each would behave in a storm. The complete reported trials.

Continuing slowly ahead is fore-reaching. It can occur while a boat is described as hove to, or with a much-reduced working sail plan. The useful question is how much forward motion remains through the water, alongside sideways drift. Zero headway through water would still allow current to move the boat over the ground. Neither hove to nor fore-reaching promises to hold a geographical position.

Changing the selected sails alters this balance. The mainsail supplies a distributed force around the mainmast’s region; a mizzen sail supplies another farther aft. Easing or removing the mizzen changes that after contribution even if the main and headsail settings remain untouched. Replacing the ordinary main with the smaller storm trysail also changes the area, height and distribution of the remaining sail action. Its separate tack, mast attachment and quarter-led sheets establish the supported shape explained in the preceding chapter. Those changes affect turning moments as well as the total driving force.

The centre of effort representing the combined sail action can therefore move as the individual contributions change. A geometric area centre or a quoted lead between sail and underwater reference centres is only an estimate for its stated geometry. It cannot locate the actual resultants in every backed, eased or reduced-sail condition. The rudder, keel and hull contribute their own changing water forces. Their combined moments determine whether the boat tends towards weather helm, turning into the wind, or lee helm, turning away, and how much corrective steering is required.

Heel adds another change of geometry. Reducing the heeling force, or lowering the height at which it effectively acts, can reduce the heeling moment. As the boat becomes more upright, its immersed shape and the positions of the force lines change too. Steering effort is one result of this coupled balance, not another name for the heeling force or for a fixed fore-and-aft centre offset.

To lie ahull is to drift without working sail. The deliberately opposed sail forces have been removed; wind on the hull and bare rig, together with waves and water resistance, determines the motion and attitude. Smyth’s 1867 dictionary records the bare-poles usage, but a single prescribed heading cannot be inferred for every hull. A boat lying ahull and one hove to may both make little headway, while relying on very different remaining forces.

Add drag at a chosen end

Equipment streamed in the water can add a force at an attachment chosen on the hull. A drogue is a drag device used to reduce speed or influence the boat’s behaviour. In the Navy 44’s stern arrangement, a basket-like Galerider is connected through a swivel to a strong working line, its rode. The rode passes through a closed stern chock, a fitting guiding it across the deck edge, and reaches a primary winch.

A second line runs from the opposite winch through the opposite stern chock to a snatch block around the main rode. This makes an adjustable bridle sharing the load between the two sides. Water acting on the streamed device tensions the rode, applying a resisting pull astern. Its stern position can also oppose yaw and influence how the boat meets following waves. The attachments and supported leads carry that pull into the hull. Navy drogue arrangement, printed pages 6-5–6-6.

A sea anchor supplies water drag commonly led from the bow, to influence drift and heading there. Para-Tech’s parachute arrangement connects the bow rode through a swivel to the canopy’s shroud lines. Relative water movement fills the canopy and tensions that connection. The pull acts at the bow, tending to hold that end towards the wind and sea rather than applying the drogue’s stern restraint.

Its working rode is separate from the float and recovery arrangement at the canopy’s apex, its central crown opposite the shroud attachments. A float line controls that end’s depth; a trip line and recovery float provide access for pulling the apex-side connection and collapsing the canopy for retrieval. Pulling the open canopy through its shrouds and collapsing it from the other end produce different responses from the same fabric. Para-Tech’s documented assembly shows those distinct connections.

Both devices act against water. An anchor holding on the seabed supplies a different connection, whose tackle belongs with the later shore-interface lesson. A sea anchor or drogue can move with the water and vessel; neither fixes the boat to the Earth. Their location, drag and the boat’s remaining sail and hull forces determine the resulting movement. Their names do not guarantee one speed, heading or response to every wave.

When the intended balance is lost

To round up is to turn towards the wind. The helmsman can choose that turn, for example to reduce sail loading, or the boat can make it despite the intended heading when the sail and hull forces produce more turning moment than the available steering correction can oppose. The direction is the same; the degree of control is different.

A broach is an uncontrolled turn accompanied by loss of normal directional control, often bringing the boat across wind and waves. In one familiar downwind case, increasing heel and a yawing disturbance turn the bow towards the wind while the rudder cannot hold the chosen course. The sail then meets a changed apparent direction, which can change its loading abruptly and intensify the departure. Wave forces can contribute as well. This is more than deliberately rounding up or briefly feathering a drawing sail.

A restrained boom does not remove those whole-boat forces, and a streamed drag device does not guarantee that they will always balance favourably. Near a lee shore, lost control or continuing drift also consumes the room for a different response. Understanding the mechanisms explains why the particular hull, rig, load and conditions matter; it cannot turn one example’s settings into a procedure for every yacht.

Those forces eventually reach the hull through a mast step, deck fitting, rudder support or other connection. The next question is how the hull carries those repeated, differently directed loads while keeping the water outside.