Zick-Zacking

Ship: Regina Maris
Date: 8th of December 2024
Position: Atlantic Ocean
Geographical Position: 15°59.481N 032°49.710W
Etmal: 153nm
Total: 3455nm

Hey guys, today, a little bit of sailing theory:

Maybe some of you who are following the course line have already noticed that our course isn’t straight all the time… even though we are still planning to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Why is that, you may ask?

It’s not because we’re drunk or because all our students can’t steer! We are doing it to sail faster and more efficiently.

Right now, we are going upwind. To maximize our speed, we’ve put up all the sails: The mizzen, the mainsail, the square sail and the schooner. If we were to go perfectly straight upwind, we’d only really use the square sail and the others would be much less efficient.

Why?

Because the other sails depend on side wind. The more the wind comes in at a 90-degree angle, the stronger the pushing force the sail can utilize.

Imagine it this way: The sail is not a flat line, it’s an arch. If the wind blows at the perfect angle, it only has one way to escape: Down the whole sail outward. The sail also provides much more area for the wind to fill. If the wind comes at a smaller angle, it only blows into part of the sail and it can escape in both directions.

Following this, it’s better not to sail completely straight. But why are we zickzacking then?

That’s what’s called wearing. From time to time, we have to change the side the sail is on because, as mentioned, we’re not sailing straight and would come off course. When we are wearing, we first turn a little so we’re sailing perfectly upwind. That’s when we start changing the side of the sail.

We take the sheet off the pin and completely release the preventer. The sheet is the rope that holds the sail in place and is used to tighten and fix it. Without a sheet, the wind wouldn’t push us forward but instead push the sail around.

The preventer is a safety rope for one of the worst-case scenarios: If the wind suddenly turns to the front, the sail can’t escape and is still fixed.

Now, we rapidly pull the sheet so that the sail swings over to the other side. Then we fix the preventer and that’s it!