Learning to sail

[m741]

Long-term, I'd be interested in crewing a ship, living on a sailboat, or just sailing for fun.

I know people have mentioned sailing or crewing ships on this forum, any advice? Local beginning sailing courses here (NYC) are ~$400/per person, for a weekend, which seems steep, just wondering if there are other alternate ways to learn the skills. Also, what's generally required from people who are crewing a ship for a month or two?

Assume I'm starting with no knowledge (I've sailed little Sunfish before, know some nautical terminology from rowing in college, and know a few basic knots, but have zero experience with larger boats and would want to start from scratch).

[jennypenny]

The places I know at the Jersey shore are overpriced as well. (and the sailing isn't very good)

Take a winter vacation and go to Aruba or St. John or Grand Cayman and do something like this*. Much better experience for your money, and spending a few days in a row learning and watching will get you over the hump.


*there are lots of companies out there, not just this one

--------

There are a few people on the forum who spend the winter on their boats. Pay one of them to take you out for a few days and teach you what you need to know.

[George the original one]

Community college or parks department should have sailing classes for reasonable cost. Otherwise, find someone with a sailboat who would be willing to teach you?

[sky]

I would not pay that much money to learn how to sail. One method would be to hang out at marinas or yacht clubs and find out when the races are. Show up before the races and ask if anyone needs crew. However, I don't think you will learn until you are piloting the boat on your own, without someone telling you what to do. For that, a sailing dinghy is the best way to learn. Find a place that will rent small sailboats, and see what you can do.

[Sclass]

My roommate sailed little 10' and 12" boats in college. Part of a PE class. The two sail (sloop?) one was pretty similar in methodology to bigger 35" boats I see. He used to say to have a two sail rig going you needed two people to do it efficiently. Is this true or have things changed? In Mountain View CA there is a little pond near Google where you can learn how to sail a dingy. This is probably a good place to learn some basics.

Anyhow I've been living on the beach a couple of months now at a friend's place. I watch the sailboats everyday and I noticed something funny. A lot of them are cruising pretty fast with rippling sails and a wake out back that looks like they're running a motor. A lot don't run the front jib (spinnaker ?) sheet. I was kind of wondering how they achieved thrust.

Are they just posers? I've been wanting to ask this but this is the only place where I know real sailors. I'm sailing ignorant but I swear these sails don't look puffed up like the Americas Cup videos.

What I'm getting at is I have an inkling that half of the people "sailing" out there are actually running a motor.

[susswein]

The big sails you see in the america's cup races are called spinnakers and are only used when sailinh downwind (with the wind behind you). On all other points of sail the sails act more like an airplanes wings and don't billow out.

As far as learning to sail, I'd recommend taking a short class (2 days maybe) to learn the basics, then hang out at the marina and start volunteer crewing. If you live somewhere that it's cheap to keep a boat the next step is to buy an inexpensive (disposable) boat (under $3000 or so) and go out and learn by doing.

[J_]

Good advise above, let others know that you are interested and have time to spend. It goes on during your whole life. I am asked to co-skipper in October to sail a 50 ft Sailing boat from Sicily(Italy) to Majorca (Spain) just a month after I let some friends know that I need a break and have time available ( I had just luck)

[jacob]

@m741 - To do it for free, put an ad on the regional/local crewlist listing your experience or lack thereof. Say that you're willing to learn and show up consistently/on-demand. If you're racing they'd also like to know your weight (the heavier the better).

Here's SF's ... each major port/sailing community will have something like this
http://sfsailing.com/sailing/index.cfm/ ... /crew_main

Quite a few crew positions don't require any skill other than pulling lines when being told to and being agile enough to scamper around on a 20 degree deck. You're literally "the hands". Most yachts require several hands but only 1 or 2 brains.

In rough order of difficulty.
Passenger
Railmeat
Mast
Jib trim
Main trim
Foredeck
Tactical/Nav
Helm/Skippering

To spend a few thousand bucks, take the basic keelboat classes. Many places do package deals, e.g. 3-7 days on the water/boat and you get a bunch of certifications in one go, oftentimes in an exotic/fancy location.

For crewing on a 1-2 month voyage you need either serious interpersonal skills, serious hard skills (first/second aid, engine repair, ..., at least skippering,...), or be a really good friend with the skipper.

Racing tends to give you lots of experience (it's a fasttrack to break stuff and get a lot of sailing in) but it also tends to turn you into a specialist. Oh yeah, some boats are known as "shouting boats" and some aren't. FYI in case you end up on the former and don't like it ... or vice versa.

Classes give you almost no experience (only so much one can do in two days) but you do get to try/do everything at least once.

In terms of boat size, the principles are the same, but the amount of forces involved on a 16 footer where you can make adjustments with human power and a 40 footer where a mislaid line will break your arm or throw you off the boat makes for a different experience.

In general, the forces (and consequentially the dollar cost of running it) goes with the square of the length. More or less.

If you want to learn more than what crewing or classes do, most likely, you'll need your own boat, so go with short. However, there are some clubs that own boats. There's one in Berkeley for example.

@SClass - They're probably motorsailing (which is perfectly moral and saves a bit of fuel---or allows them to go faster than on sail alone) and not really caring about trim because they either have lots of money to replace the sails they're flogging to death or the sails are already old and they don't care. The reason they don't run out the jib (smaller white triangle in front of the bigger triangle) is likely because it requires effort to change it from side to side and let it in/out each time the boat turns in different directions, whereas the main is much more forgiving in terms of bad trim (as long as you don't have a need for speed) and can be operated from the back by the helmsman/skipper without changing any lines. Likely these people are just "out on the water with the family" and only one person on board actually knows how to sail. Or they are lazy. Or cruisers ;-P ...

Putting out the spinakker (big colorful sail) takes a lot more skill than white sails and it is only possible when going [mostly] downwind. The only purpose of putting it up is to go faster. If only the main (or the jib, but not both) is up, the boat can't go upwind but that's what the motor is for, eh.

Also, on a family outing, if you're on sails alone going upwind you're beating (apparent wind is much higher, typically but not always, you're going into the waves, so the boat gets wet ... kinda like the difference between a light breeze and a rainstorm for the same sea conditions) and generally non-sailors don't consider that a pleasant experience. With a motor you have more choice in terms of how to roll over the waves(*) instead of plowing into them. So that's another factor.

That is not to say ... that you can't sail a sloop single-handed. You just have to plan the tacks and gybes out and sacrifice a bit---a lot!---of style.

(*) If you have workaholic maintrimmer/helmsman combo who can read each others minds, you can do this on sails too.

[Chris]

Local beginning sailing courses here (NYC) are ~$400/per person, for a weekend, which seems steep

If you come farther up the Hudson, it gets cheaper: Westchester - $200/16 hours

[m741]

Wow, I appreciate all the responses - I'll have to take some time to read through all these. Maybe I can find some cheaper options (right now it's challenging without a car). I like the idea of taking a trip and learning to sail at the same time. Seems like a cool way to take a trip, and alos an opportunity to see the Caribbean from a different perspective.

[Ego]

Here you go. Adventure of a lifetime.

http://patch.com/new-york/williamsburg/ ... lmer-twins

You've got 72 hours.

[McTrex]

On our honeymoon we went to Curacao and I did a keelboat training on the Spanish Water.https://www.google.nl/maps/place/Spaans ... bdde?hl=nl

That was fantastic! Nice weather, lots of wind and fast sailing, I would recommend it to anyone!

[Sclass]

Thank you Jacob for explaining the motor sailing. That's just the kind of info I was looking for.

[7Wannabe5]

...or find a skipper who is interested in seeing what you look like in a bathing suit and you might even get some free sangria thrown in with the free lessons. I manned the helm on a big sailboat for a couple of hours yesterday. Super fun!

[tommytebco]

7wannabe5
It's your hip to waist ratio!! Knocks 'em over every time. Free pass guaranteed
LOL

[7Wannabe5]

@tommytebco : It's not really the waist-to-hip ratio, it's the high degree of empathy I am exhibiting by not assuming any higher motivations. Anyways, I think many of the young men on this forum could get similar results trading with a .8 waist to shoulder ratio and some ballroom dancing lessons. I'm spending the next week teaching an ad hoc overflow kindergarten full of low-income recent immigrant and inner city children crying for their mothers in a variety of languages in a room with no air conditioning and virtually no supplies at the rate of $12/hr. ,so I don't feel too bad about "exploiting" wealthy old (over 50) men for luxury items ; )

Serious suggestion for the OP would be considering the Great Lakes as a venue. The guy I'm going out with races all the time and won one of the big races around here and he doesn't seem too picky about crew, and he said he usually has 5 or 6 at a time for racing.

[tommytebco]

7w5
I'm just poking at you.

I grew up in the Detroit area and once belonged to the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club.
I occasionally crewed and I had a small (20 foot) sailboat.

One of my friends still lives there and sails out of Bayview Yacht Club. I agree that getting in touch with yacht clubs to volunteer as crew is a good way. But personal acquaintance is the normal inroad to such a position. There is no shortage of Yacht Clubs in the New York area. Jacobs suggestion of finding a crew site is a good one, but I know of none. I believe that a school or some kind of hands on experience would be a prerequisite. Certainly would be on my boat, if I had one.

[jacob]

Yeah, our boat would take anyone as long as they'd be willing to show up, sit on the rail and get wet, and be able to move to whatever side w/o killing themselves when ordered to. Of course I was the main trimmer, so I was always calling for more meat. After a few races, they'd graduate to the mast. Then after a few turns of that, they'd get sent to the jibs. During the 2-3 years I was sailing only a couple of people ever made it that far. Most people quickly discover that they don't like sailing that much.

[Gilberto de Piento]

It's not sailing exactly but windsurfing can be very inexpensive if you live by water and don't mind hunting down a deal on old gear. It takes a lot of practice and coordination plus the right wind conditions to get it working though.

[tommytebco]

Found this link in my bookmarks. I never followed up on it.
http://www.latitude38.com/crewlist/crui ... ults.lasso