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I'm not a complete newbie, I used to have sailing lessons so I know the basics like tacking and tying knots. It's been years since I've sailed a boat though so resources, info, or book recommendations would be much appreciated even on the basic stuff. What I want to know about is "how to sail" both inland and near coast water, as well as in the ocean. Over the summer I will be practising sailing mainly in a nearby lakes' sailing club, so I will get some practice in. After the summer I will likely sail off the coast but not out in the ocean, with a sailing club or something. I want good info on "how to sail" from basic to advanced so I can tighten up and recognize any mistakes I might be making. Also, I want to know the differences between small boats / yachts, how their design works, and the advantages of a sloop over a schooner (as an example) and vice versa.I can slowly crawl through wikipedia and other sources, but I haven't found something that gives clear advantages / disadvantages along with a historical background and how / why the boat was designed the way it was. I also want to know about the poo poo like navigation (without gps) So, along with that, what're some good boats to start with and why? I don't want no engines, but one day I'd like to fix up and old yacht and cruise around with just my sails and the mercy of the sea.... (and I know how much maintenance this is and it's likely to be pricey). I didn't find a sailing thread on SA not in archive, idk why, it's cool as hell.
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Jun 13, 2015 01:25
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Crack posted:I didn't find a sailing thread on SA not in archive, idk why, it's cool as hell.
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Jun 13, 2015 03:11
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That's a boat engine thread really, I am not interested in that just sails.
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Jun 13, 2015 04:02
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FYI if you actually seriously want to sail around the oceans you also want a propeller on your boat. It's a safety issue for a number of reasons not least of navigation in marinas.
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Jun 13, 2015 04:29
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Bip Roberts posted:FYI if you actually seriously want to sail around the oceans you also want a propeller on your boat. It's a safety issue for a number of reasons not least of navigation in marinas. Eh, I'm going 1 step at a time and around the oceans is like step 100. E: by which I mean by the time I reach that point I'll already know about needing a propeller. I'm just trying to work on steps 1-10, first on the agenda is picking a boat and getting some practice, reading about boats as well. Crack fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Jun 13, 2015 |
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Jun 13, 2015 05:04
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I am also super interested in sailing. I mostly read about real ocean cruising. Sadly, SA seems unable to maintain a sailing thread  Heres some sailing stuff I like though! Ask me about moving onto a 36' sailboat with 0 sailing experience dead thread that I've had bookmarked forever http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3665756 Hold Fast "Stories of maniac sailors, anarchist castaways, and the voyage of the S/V Pestilence..." really recommend watching this if you havnt already. Romanticizes sailing, but in the best way. Documentary style baby https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lwbHYOFD-4 Some youtube channels I'm subbed to. You have to start these at the first episode and watch them in order. Sailing La Vagabonde a young aussie couple sails around the world, helps that the girl is really cute/charming https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZdQjaSoLjIzFnWsDQOv4ww WhiteSpotPirates german girl buys a boat in panama to fix up and sail. Editing in this one is really good. The most realistic portrayal of what it really takes to buy a POS boat and make that sailing dream a reality. This is probably my favorite one. I cant wait til she starts making videos again! https://www.youtube.com/user/WhiteSpotPirates SV Delos Crew ~50ft boat with onboard distillery, and full scuba gear! A dude from Seattle and his brother, accompanied by their cute kiwi/aussie girlfriends sail everywhere. Pretty sure they've circumnavigated by now. These are the people doing it right, and goddamn, i'm jealous! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvLc83k5o11EIF1lEo0VmuQ BOOKS  This book owns. Annie Hill gives valuable insight into sailing forever on virtually nothing.  A book comparing small singlehand-able blue water ocean cruising boats. Relevant to me and what I dream about Have I mentioned that I've never even stepped foot on a sailboat?  I plan on crewing on some small sailboats once I start my big traveling adventure here in the near future. I need to get some real experience and decide if its for me or not. I'm attracted to the idea of self sufficiency that comes with sailing. Not to mention the adventure and freedom. I'm in love with the idea of it for sure. The reality of live-aboard life isn't all cake and butterflies though, I cant wait to sail for real and see what its all about!
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Jun 13, 2015 07:59
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Ah the best advice so far from someone who hasn't sailed :P . I wonder why so few goons are into it to have a thread about sailboating survive. I'm familiar with the Blue Anarchy one, and will definitely check out the books and stuff you mentioned. The Aubrey–Maturin series is tier 1 (fiction) and is a big inspiration for me, although generally on much larger and much older boats than the ones we're interested in. I recommend them nevertheless for a great seafaring tale. I need to read some Moby Dick too... reddits more active, and while I haven't read any of those books other than the series I mentioned (unfinished that though...), they're likely decent and the hyperlinks all lead to free books under Gutenberg or a nice auther, so probably worth checking out at least and if it's bad quality nothing lost. Also this may be completely invalid assumption but most SA users are American, so this could be a valuable reddit for you to follow. SAs opinion on reddit as a whole is pretty negative but I think for niche things like this it can be valuable. I will suggest to you, even if you are completely unable to get access to a boat, I can't think of many places you can't get a piece of rope and a book on knots, which could be very handy. In any case, thanks for being the only one in my aptly tagged "poo poo thread" to actually put any effort in. If I ever realise my dream of building or repairing and old boat and sail the atlantic, you are more than welcome to be my mate, mate. E: one of my big inspirations is a blind man in rural(ish) Wales called Roger who builds boats. If a blind man who relies on a guidedog to get around can build boats, I can't see why I shouldn't be able too either also a welsh folk song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsSDlxJ4WLA Crack fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Jun 16, 2015 |
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Jun 16, 2015 03:47
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Crack posted:Also, I want to know the differences between small boats / yachts, how their design works, and the advantages of a sloop over a schooner (as an example) and vice versa.I can slowly crawl through wikipedia and other sources, but I haven't found something that gives clear advantages / disadvantages along with a historical background and how / why the boat was designed the way it was. That's a huge subject to try and condense down to an internet forum - I've had a go at simply outlining the reasons why the sloop is the standard for modern yachts (simple answer - it's cheap and reasonably good at everything) and it turned into a huge ramble that covers virtually every aspect of modern yacht design, the habits of today's sailors, the marketing needs of the builders and more. I've kept my effortpost though, so if you want to read all that I can paste it in? Do you have any slightly more specific questions? Any particular boats or rigs you've seen and thought "why does it look like that?" or "what does that funny little sail do?" I think that would be easier to answer than typing out a complete history of the evolution of the sailing ship, which is what doing the subject any more justice than the (really rather good) Wikipedia pages on each rig type provide would require. Perhaps if I 'state my credentials' it might provoke some questions? I grew up on the south coast of England and learnt to sail dinghys when I was six or so (both my parents were keen sailors). My family owned a succession of dinghys (Toppers, Lasers and Mirrors, mainly) and I did a bit of club/inter-club racing, with entirely mediocre results but it was good fun. I gradually moved to crewing on small (25-30 foot) yachts at the sailing club and then my family bought a share in a 38-foot Dufour which we had for 11 years and which as well as using very regularly on day/weekend trips we did longer cruises of 2-3 weeks - either across the Channel to northern France or along the English coast. Between learning from my Dad, other sailing friends and a couple of courses, I like to think I became a pretty competent coastal yacht sailor - certainly once I was older I was able to skipper the Dufour 'solo' (no parents, at least) on some trips and longer cruises of my own. In university I worked few summers at a local yacht charter company, first doing maintenance then crewing on deliveries. This really sharpened up my navigation skills and, unlike many, I actually enjoy doing it, so I acted as navigator for a couple of long delivery trips of a few days. Through that company I ended up doing the RYA's Coastal Skipper course, which is exactly as it sounds. It's not a formal qualification that entitles you to do anything on a professional basis, like a Yachtmaster certificate would, but I have paperwork that implies I know what I'm doing. Now I work in an entirely non-nautical job in a town in the UK that's pretty much as far from the sea as you can get, so I'm happy to talk about sailing and the sea as much as possible! I'm just bought a Mirror dinghy to refurbish for sailing on a nearby inland reservoir so I'm going back to my roots, as it were.
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Jun 16, 2015 22:38
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BalloonFish posted:That's a huge subject to try and condense down to an internet forum - I've had a go at simply outlining the reasons why the sloop is the standard for modern yachts (simple answer - it's cheap and reasonably good at everything) and it turned into a huge ramble that covers virtually every aspect of modern yacht design, the habits of today's sailors, the marketing needs of the builders and more. I've kept my effortpost though, so if you want to read all that I can paste it in? Yeah go for it, I guess I'm at a stage where I don't really know the right questions to ask. A lot of people seem to just sail without much experience, so maybe I'm thinking into it. What's the reservoir if you don't mind me asking?
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Jun 17, 2015 19:27
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If you live near a body of water where people sail, you can rent these little one-person sailboats (that probably have a name, but I don't know what they are) and sail back and forth across the bay/lake/whatever all day for $20 or so. I learned on a 25' sailboat with a main and a jib, and would have rather learned on a rowboat with a sail on it. It's my opinion that once you can sail that 6' dinghy, you can sail a 100' schooner. It's a matter of principle, and once you get it, you're golden. Sailing, like other skills, is pretty easy to "get" and pretty difficult to master. After a 1 day course, you can probably sail my 25' Catalina pretty well. You could sail it from here across the ocean without much issue. Unless something goes wrong. In which case you're going to need to know a lot of troubleshooting and a lot of obscure details. So, sail around the bay all day long a lot. But do a lot of training before you take off where the Coast Guard can't get to you.
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Jun 17, 2015 22:50
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He doesn't update it anymore but one of the coolest men in Finland designs a lot of small inexpensive boats varying greatly in skill needed to make and sail or paddle them- And he doesn't charge for plans. http://koti.kapsi.fi/hvartial/ Keep scrolling down, great resource for understanding boats, the history and the math. It can be a little hard to follow if you're as dumb as I am, but still a great resource.
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Jun 25, 2015 04:32
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extra stout posted:He doesn't update it anymore but one of the coolest men in Finland designs a lot of small inexpensive boats varying greatly in skill needed to make and sail or paddle them- And he doesn't charge for plans. I tried http://koti.kapsi.fi and got a picture of a gooseberry bush and something in Finnish. I hope the boat page isn't in Finnish because I have enough to learn about boats without picking up a new language. Oh I was trying to connect over https which isn't allowed for some reason. But yeah this looks pretty good, lots of good info. I was thinking about building one, I dunno whether to go for something really small so it's cheaper / less time consuming to build but I think up to a point the difference won't be massive and I'd like to be able to hold at least one shipmate so I don't end up just rowing alone all the time, though it would be peaceful. OTOH it is incredibly tempting to buy / steal the cheapest functional cruiser and just learn as I sail. Annie Hall book finally arrived today which I'm sure is going to make me really want to take this option the way Hold Fast did. Crack fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Jun 25, 2015 |
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Jun 25, 2015 18:24
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Crack posted:
Everyone uses GPS. However when I was a kid we had seamanship tests which included learning to read charts and chart courses by hand (which you never really do on the boat, but is good to know I guess). I could tell you more about that. Also once you're familiar enough with a harbor/area (and if you're on a smaller boat like we had you're not usually going too far) you learn to do most things by sight. For example, heading out of our home harbor there's a marker you're supposed to pass to the left of, because to its right there's a rocky reef. However, if it's high tide and you line up a certain landmark on shore with a certain flagpole and sail that bearing, you'll pass through a gap in the rocks and be fine. It's much quicker than following the safer route. So we learned a lot of stuff like that where you could look over to shore and go "oh poo poo, we're way too close to that reef that's over here, who the gently caress is driving?". I was never the ship navigator though, that position went to an extremely nerdy guy who could look at a chart, look at the gps, push his coke bottle glasses up his nose, look at the clouds and say "the wind is going to pick up over that way" and was always eerily correct. It was loving uncanny. So I'm not sure that's a particular skill anybody could teach you. Navigation during races was more about that, figuring out where the wind was going to come in and when, and how close you could cut it to the shoreline/rocks without going aground. Stuff like crossing oceans is Greek to me. ETA: here's pretty much all the tools you need to chart by hand, if you want to know anything about them I've used them all a few times, except that terrifying ten-point compass thing, although it looks super cool: http://www.landfallnavigation.com/tradtool.html fuzzy_logic fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Jun 30, 2015 |
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Jun 30, 2015 06:21
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Crack posted:
Nice! This thread made me buy like 5 more sailing books, just finished 'a voyage for madmen' which is about the 1968 golden globe race. I loved it Maybe Im just a sucker for sailing books
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Jun 30, 2015 06:45
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fuzzy_logic posted:
I know people use gps, but I've never seen a gps that looks this cool. There isn't one on the page you linked, I thought they were still needed for "classical" navigation or am I wrong? Ocean cruising without a gps or compass seems like it would be impossible to me, but I don't know how it is done, and also is why I want to learn it. I mean when there are no landmarks and there is just sea in every direction but somehow you know where you are and where you are pointing, seems like magic to me but I'm hopelessly ignorant. So I probably wouldn't know what questions to ask without reading a navigation guide first at least, and honestly thats pretty low on my priorities right now as I'm unlikely to be sailing away anytime soon, and my "boat time" is already filled up with learning about more fundamental aspects of boats, I'm thinking of building a small stitch and glue dinghy so I'm reading about designs and boat building, and I'm crewing when possible at the sailing club when there are races on (which use coloured buoys which are not difficult to navigate, although I currently live fairly far inland so it's just a lake where there are easy to remember landmarks anyway). I LIKE COOKIE posted:Nice! Na sailing books own, even sailing fiction tends to introduce me to new concepts and words I find interesting, and I love the photos / sketch's of boats or boat designs, maps and other illustrations in the bigger ones. Originally I have to admit I didn't really know what I was getting into and was just thinking 'sailing looks interesting' and while it's fairly simple fundamentally I think, even ocean cruising theoretically (if you use gps and modern technology), it seems to have an insane amount of depth to it (haha...) and the more I read the more interested I am in it. Although I am also interested in the history, design and "crazy sailers" etc, not just being fastest in a dinghy race. Even just 'voyaging on a small income' has me almost convinced to build a 30 foot junk rigged yacht, and I've even got 'the bean book' recommended in it so I can eat more cheaply atm and save more money to go towards boat related things. I'm moving to a coastal city pretty soon anyway which has a sailing club I'm looking forward to joining, and I'm pretty sure I will have enough cash buy or build some sort of boat there, even if it is a roll your own stitch and glue design with sails stolen from a construction site. one day maybe I'll even read moby dick
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Jul 1, 2015 16:04
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Crack posted:I'm not a complete newbie, I used to have sailing lessons so I know the basics like tacking and tying knots. It's been years since I've sailed a boat though so resources, info, or book recommendations would be much appreciated even on the basic stuff. What I want to know about is "how to sail" both inland and near coast water, as well as in the ocean. Over the summer I will be practising sailing mainly in a nearby lakes' sailing club, so I will get some practice in. After the summer I will likely sail off the coast but not out in the ocean, with a sailing club or something. I want good info on "how to sail" from basic to advanced so I can tighten up and recognize any mistakes I might be making. I don't know if this thread has died or what but I will give her a go. First off, its good that you are going to a sailing school. Although raising or lowering sails is not hard, its the trimming of the sails that requires knowledge and some experience to get the most out of your boat. now, since you dont want to be using someone else boat all the time, you will need a boat of your own. I suggest a trailer sailor. This is a small boat that you can tow behind your car/truck. It is the cheapest to keep and easiest to learn on. They typically come in sizes from 16' up to 25' in length. Some have no cabins....aka 'day sailors' and some do which most call weekenders. They are typically easy to handle single handed and dont cost that much used. You will need to have the boat registered as well as the trailer. An outboard is nice to have and you will probably have to pay reg taxes on that too. Typically look at Craigslist, local marina, and https://www.yachtworld.com for used boats. You can get one for less than $500 (not pretty but it floats) or up to $25k (new car smell). Since I dont know if the OP is still around, I guess I could start a new thread about sailing.
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Aug 30, 2015 00:26
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