Sailing Tips, Maintenance Lessons, and More!

In This Issue

Highlighted Course

Promo Code

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Youth Programs
Adult Programs
About Us

Past Newsletters

Hightlighted Course:

Adult Ed. classes start sooner than you think. The first courses start in the begenning of May! Choose between Monday nights, Tuesday nights, or Saturdays.

Save Money!

Have you become a member of the DSC yet this year?

Fear not! Our Early Bird Special is still available through March 15!

When registering online please use the promo code:

1G7L9ELB

Smart Currents

An Educational E-Newsletter from the Downtown Sailing Center

Welcome!

You are now a part of the first ever education specific newsletter from the DSC! "Smart Currents" is aimed to be a monthly e-newsletter with various educational topics.

One of the strongest responses from our communication survey was that our readers wanted to learn! You will find articles from DSC staff, instructors, industry experts, and long time veterans of the sailing world! Topics will range from sail trim, teak repair, racing tactics, to Med-mooring.

We want this to be an interactive newsletter. If you have nagging questions like "What the heck is kedging?", let us know and we will answer it here! Some topics from "Smart Currents" will be posted to the online forum and blog to help encourage discussion, so join in the conversation, take a moment to share your ideas, teach us something and learn something yourself!

Feel free to email me with questions or suggestions.

Cheers!

Grady Byus

Office Manager

Fundamental Sail Trim

With the spring sailing season right around the corner it is time to start thinking about sailing again. Nothing is more fundamental to good sailing than good sail trim.

When I teach sail trim I like to build a framework for decision making. If you go to the library or bookstore and look at the dozens of books on trim, you might think you need to be a NASA engineer to make sails work (doesn't hurt), but if you watch an 8 year old Optimist sailors race around a course, you quickly realize that an advanced understanding of what is going on is not necessary to sail well. In fact I think sail trim can be as easy as 1-2-3.

First of all; what is sail trim? I've heard hundreds of definitions, but I think about trim as how we manipulate our sails to best take advantage of the wind to power our vessel on our desired course. So, we have one objective, this is the first part of sail trim and our number 1 in our 1-2-3 steps to sail trim.

Second, we have to take into consideration the Floating Cup two "modes" of sailing. The first, Push Mode, is the easiest to understand. If you throw a paper cup on the water, wherever the wind pushes it, it goes. The wind blows and the cup goes. To get slightly more technical, the sail "blocks" the wind and the result is an increased or positive pressure on the windward side of the sail, which results in force that is pushes the sail away from the wind.

Sail Theory-Pull The second mode is Pull Mode. In pull mode the wind attaches to the curved surface of the sail and flows from its leading edge (near the mast) to its trailing edge (the leech of the sail.) As it flows across the sail's curved surface positive pressure builds on the windward side of the sail, and negative pressure builds on the leeward side of the sail, and the result is both a pushing and a pulling force on the sail. Viola - we have push mode.

The importance of knowing which mode you are sailing in is straightforward. In push mode we want to trim our sail in such a way that we "block" as much wind as possible. In pull mode (I sometimes call it "flow" mode) we want to present a sail so that the wind actually attaches to the curved surface and flows from the leading edge to the trailing edge of the sail. So we have two modes - with two very different objectives.

Quick question: What points of sail do you think are push and which are pull?

Finally, we have the THREE "elements" of sail trim. These three elements are:

1) Angle of Attack - The angle of the sail's chord to the wind.

2) Draft - The amount of camber in a sail, and the location of maximum camber

3) Twist - The difference in the angle of attack at the top of the sail relative to the bottom of the sail.

I will discuss in greater detail the three elements - or ingredients as well as "what do you want, and when do you want it." For the sake of this post, I hope that this frame work of thinking about sail trim as having one objective, two possible sailing modes, and three elements of trim gets you thinking about how to trim your sails this season.

Please post your comments and questions at the blog. If you are a member join us in the member forums for more sail trim conversation.

Until next time, remember, "When in doubt - let it out!"

Calendar Report

As with many new aspects of our website, the new calendar is interactive and contains many more tools than ever before. Because of this, I thought I'd take a moment to discuss some of the new features and how they work for you!

"Mini Calendar"

When you visit the different program pages on our website, each has a specific calendar like the one pictured to the right. These "mini calendars" have dates that are specific to the program such as Adult Ed. level one sessions, or juniors camp dates. These are the best places to find the events you are interested in for the specific programs.

All of our events can be found on the master calendar here. The master calendar is the best place to look for a variety of different events.

The primary difference between the calendar on our old website and the new calendar is online registration(yay!). To register for an event simply click on the appropriate event, then click register. Some events will have multiple registration types, so chose the one that is appropriate to you.

The registration process is designed to be as simple as possible, but if you are a member it is even more streamlined. If logged in as a member, the event registration will self populate all of your details, reducing registration time to a matter of seconds.

If there is a fee associated with the event, you will be transferred to our secure PayPal site to complete your payment.

"Why register?" you ask? And, "Why register in advance?" Pre-registration simply helps us provide the best event for you! Thinking of coming to a work party? If everyone registers ahead of time we will know how much coffee how many Subway subs to get. Vegetarian? We will know that too if you pre-register and let us know!

The registration system also allows you to choose whether or not other members can see if you are registered for an event. This will allow members to view your profile(If you want) and send you a secure message through our website.

For example, when last weeks frostbite racing was canceled due to weather concerns, Super-member Kathleen Pryor sent everyone that was registered a message asking if they wanted to join her for a rain-check(pun intended) the following day. As it turned out, it was one of the best sailing days of the winter and six sailors had a beautiful day on the water.

Finally, we are asking for you to register for events because we want to say thank you. When your register we can effectively show our appreciation and seek your feedback on how we can do better in the future.

We have built the new website and its tools to better suit you. As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, the door is always open and the phone is sitting on my desk. I look forward to an amazing year at the DSC!

Grady

Seamanship

Spring is coming! Spring is coming! Which is a good time to talk about SPRING LINES.

What are spring lines? According to Chapman's Piloting and Seamanship (a great resource) spring Lines are lines that control the fore and aft movement of a vessel. At a dock, pier, quay or slip they are the lines that should be rigged so that a boat cannot move forward and backwards and make contact with another boat or other hard object (like the dock!)

Spring lines can be used to secure the boat, but are also very useful for helping to maneuver a boat or stop a boat that is coming into a docking situation. In future posts we will discuss how spring lines can be used to warp a boat into or out of tricky docking scenarios as well as how to effectively use an aft spring line to stop a boat that is coming into a docking situation.

Spring lines have specific names. Sailors tend to go with what they know - especially when it comes to naming things on the boat.

A spring line is named for the direction they lead. For instance a spring that leads aft from the boat - is an "aft spring line." One that leads forward is a "forward spring" or "bow spring line." The names can get more complicated (i.e. "after bow spring"), but if you keep the "which way does it lead" question in mind; you'll know which line is being talked about.

Here at the DSC, spring lines are serious business. Because we snuggle multiple boats into our slips it is imperative that they not be allowed to slide forward or aft and make contact with another boat or the dock itself. This winter we had two boats suffer damage because an aft spring line was not made fast and one boat slid forward and made contact with another. Over the course of a night, the bow "ate" a hole in the transom of its neighbor. This is fixable - but more importantly; it is avoidable.

Before leaving your boat for the day, make sure to give it the "bang test." Once you've secured the bow and stern lines and your spring lines, maneuver the boat around and make sure it doesn't go BANG! into anything. This is also a good way to test that you've set your fenders properly. If you are sharing the slip with another boat, do the same to them to make sure when the wind shifts the boats don't.

A final question to ask yourself - should a dock line stretch or be non-stretch? Not sure? Shoot me an email and I'll explain!

Fair winds and following seas -