What's New; 314; Sailing. Part 1

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or y 'all come back and see us now here. A long time ago, someone discovered that New Englanders and people from Boston said certain words in a certain way, this different from the way they were said in other places. The rest of America has been kidding Bostonians and other New Englanders have bothered ever since. For instance, where I might say rudder and tiller in reference to sailing, Jeff Nelson, whom we'll meet shortly, says rudder and tiller. His way of saying it is just as good as mine and our differing ways may differ from the way you say rudder and tiller. At any rate, today we're going sailing very appropriately in and around the sailing pavilion of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the Charles River in Boston. To tell us about it, let's meet the man in charge of teaching sailing at MIT, Jerry Reed. I'm going to meet him. I'm going to meet him. I'm going to meet him. I'm going to meet him. I'm going to meet him.

I'm going to meet him. Hi, how many of you boys and girls have ever been out in a sailboat? I'm sure that a great many of you have, and I hope that we'll encourage a great many more of you to give it a try when you watch us today. It's a great sport you know. It's fun when you're racing someone that you'd like to beat, and it's also relaxing on a warm day like today. There are many kinds of sailboats. Some small ones like the one I'm in with a single sail, others with a great many sails, but they all act in the same way. And when you learn to sail in a small boat, you can apply the same principles to larger boats. You can begin by being a crew for someone who has a boat and is a good sailor.

That way you can learn by practical experience. One thing is very important about sailing, and that is that anyone who goes out in a sailboat must know how to swim. I'm sure you realize how important that is. Besides, you should have a life saver or a piece of life -saving equipment like this in for every person on board the boat. Now I'm going to come back in and show you how this life -preserver is being used. I'm

going to show you how to swim. I'm going to show you how to swim. I'm going to show you how to swim. I'm going to show you how to swim. I'm going to show you how to swim. I'm going to show you how to swim. Now I'm going to take the sail down. Now the breeze has come up a little. That's good. Now this is a common life -saving device. And some states require that we have one of these in each boat for each person. And I think we should make it a habit to have life -saving devices aboard. This one is Coast Guard approved, and I want to show you the correct way that we use it. We take the strap and put one leg through it. The opposite strap goes around the shoulder so that the life -preserver cushion lays against the body,

allows both hands free to do a little swimming. And this is an important point. I think that all boats should have these in, and for every person aboard a life -saving device. Now another important thing is getting in and out of the boat. And I want to start by showing you the wrong way to do this. If you get into the bow of the boat, the weight in this part of the boat puts the bow down in the water. The stern will come out of water, and the boat becomes unstable. And it's very easy this way to tip the boat over. Instead of getting into the boat over the bow, try to remember to get into the boat by stepping into the center of the boat, get as close to the middle as possible, and then sit down. It's a good plan to keep your weight down low in a small boat. Now a good sailor knows his boat and knows the parts of the boat.

And I think that we should all learn a little bit about the sailor's language and learn how to tie a few knots. I want to introduce to you now a friend of mine, and this is Jeff Nelson. Jeff has been learning to sail with us for a great while, and he knows some of the parts of the boat well, and I'd like to have him tell him to you. Would you do that, Jeff? Yes. Well, first of all, the front half of the boat is called the bow, and the back half of the boat is called the stern. And on the stern, there is a pot called the trance, which is a very back part of the boat. On the trance, he's a tiller and a rudder. The rudder and the tiller steer the boat. Over here is the centerboard housing. And the centerboard, and there is a centerboard in the centerboard housing. And this centerboard is used

to keep the boat from sliding slipping in the water. And to work the centerboard, this lever is used. Here is the mast, and here is the boom. This is the boom. And the mast and the boom are connected by a finning called the goose neck. And on the mast and the boom, the sail is held up. The steeling rigging on the dinghy are the stays. The two side stays one here, one here, and the fourth stay. There is a running rigging. One of the running rigging are the halium. And the halium pulls up the sail. And to the halium, when you pull up the sail, you

tie your knot to the head of the sail, called the stencil tackman. It is a special knot because it won't slip, and I'll pull up the sail. And to the end of the sail, And to the end of the sail, now tie the halium around the cleat.

Another part of the running rigging is the downhole hal, which is the rope here. And the downhole is connected to the goose neck. And this downhole stretches the left of the sail. And then you tie the tie to the room of the cleat.

And the last part of the running rigging is the main sheet. And the main sheet trims the sail, and it pulls it in and out while you're sailing. The parts of the sail are the foot, along the boom, it's the foot, the loft, which goes along the mast. The leech is the outside. And then the corners of the sail are the tack. The corner over there is the clone, and the top of the sail is called the head. And

then you take the boat out, and show them how you can sail it. Okay. All ready? Yep. All ready? All ready? All ready? All ready? All ready? All ready?

All ready? All ready? All ready? All ready? All ready? All ready? All ready? All ready? Well, just doing very well with the sailing, as you can see. He showed you the major parts of the boat, and there are many more parts in where you should know. I suggest you get a basic sailing book from the bookstore or the library. It will have the knots a sailor should know. Jeff showed an important one, the stencil takedown. I think there are eight basic knots that you should know and how to use them. If you take a sailing course, and I'm sure there is probably one running near where you live, you will find that it will not all be in the boats. Some of it will be on land, and this will call shore school. I'd like to take you into my shore school and show you more about sailing. Now Jeff told us about the centerboard and how the centerboard operated

through the centerboard lever. And we want to examine a little more closely the way the centerboard keeps the boat from going sideways. We've made a little flat model of a boat here, and we're going to let this surface of this block represent the surface of the sail. And we're going to apply a force against the sail similar to the force of the wind. And we're going to have the wind come at right angles to the boat. And we will notice that the boat slides sideways when we apply this force. Now if we put the centerboard down and we will let this piece of wood here represent the centerboard and apply this same force against the side of the sail in the same way, we notice the boat then moves forward the way the boat is headed. Now it is the application of these two forces working against each other that produce the forward

motion of the boat. The force of lateral resistance of the centerboard against the force of the wind on the sail. And this is the way that the boat travels forward through the water. Now let's look at a model of the centerboard. The centerboard is down from the keel of the boat straight down when the handle is in the down position. When the handle is brought up then the centerboard comes up into the housing so that the boat may then be hauled out on the dock. And when we're sailing with the wind over the side of the boat, we must have the centerboard down into the water to provide the lateral resistance necessary to keep the boat on its course. Now if we apply the wind for us through the fan here, we are going to look at the relation between the sail and the wind just as we looked

at the relation between the centerboard and the wind over there. We will notice that the sail, when it's headed into the wind, just simply flutters. And we call that laughing because it shakes first up here at the left of the sail. You remember that Jeff pointed out that the left of the sail was up along the mast. And that is where we look to see when the sail is laughing. So this is called the laughing of the sail. Of course, when the sail is laughing, there's no force on the boat at all. Now when the wind is over the side of the boat, the force of the wind then is transmitted to the sail and it begins to apply itself to force the boat ahead just as we showed here on the table. If the wind is from a stern, the wind is coming over the stern of the boat, then we must have the sail way out in order to catch all the wind

so that the boat will go faster with the wind pushing it along. Now when we come back and have the wind over the side, if we don't pull the sail in, we find that again the sail loves. Now this is all very fine to show us what direction the wind is blowing, but it has no use to us unless the wind is drawing on the sail. So we have to pull the sail in and get that force of the wind working on the sail so that the boat will be driven ahead again. When we tack the boat, we push the tiller over towards the sail. The boat comes up into the wind and goes over onto the other tack. We can do this in either direction, but each time we push the tiller towards the sail and the boat comes about on the other tack. Now we will like to go out in the dinghy and try some of these things and see how they work in the actual dinghy. One of the first

things to check when going for a sail is the wind direction. The wind direction is very important because when we put the sail up, we want to have the wind coming over the bow of the boat so that the sail does not fill with wind, but rather lusts. These little pieces of yarn here tied in the rigging are served to tell what the wind direction is. These are called telltips and they show how the wind is blowing so that we know when we're sailing where the wind is coming from. They're very good indicators of the wind direction. Now let's get ready to sail. We get into the boat as before by getting in the middle. We hoist the sail up. Make

it fast on the cleat. Then coil up our pallet and hang it on the cleat. And then adjust the downhole. Now we're ready to cast off. Pull the boat along until we can unhook the line. And we give a good shove to get the boat started. Now as we did on the model, we get the wind over the side of the boat and let it blow into the sail. You can tell by the telltale how the wind is striking the sail. And if we'd point the boat

into the wind too much, we'll notice the sail fluttering up there in the leech of the sail. So we know that we're not going to sail well with the sail laughing like that. We have to pull it in so that we can get some wind blowing into the sail and give us the force necessary to push the boat along. Now the boat picks up speed against the travel properly and we have better control. When we're sailing with the wind behind us, we turn and have the wind come down over the steer to the boat and we have to let the sail further out to catch all that wind. When we come back on the wind again, you'll notice that we have to pull the sail in in order to keep pressure on the sail. If we leave it out, the sail looks. So we pull it in again in order to get the boat moving. Now notice how the tiller and the rudder are connected

together. When we push the tiller, the rudder moves with it. And when we push the tiller over to the starboard side of the boat, the boat moves to the left. When we pull the tiller over to the fourth side, the boat moves to the right. Now this is how we steer the boat. When we want to turn the boat or boat, we push the tiller hard over towards the sail and the boat will come completely around and we can get the wind on the other side. Now we're on the starboard side, having the wind coming over the starboard side. When we sail close to the wind, we pull the sail in. When we sail away from the wind, we let the sail out so that when we're sailing downwind or with the wind over the stern, we have the sail way out to catch the wind.

Remember on the model that we showed you how to tack? Tacking was bringing the boat into the wind by pushing the tiller towards the sail, bringing the wind on the other side of the boat and changing sides as we tack over. And we use this method of tacking to work our way to windward. When we want to work our way to windward, we sail first on the starboard tack, having the wind close on the starboard side, then we come about and put the boat on the other tack close haul so that we work our way up into the wind. Each time we tack, we take another step up into the wind.

So we want to get used to working with the tiller, remembering where the wind is from, so that we can take advantage of all the pus and handle the boat properly. Now let's go off the wind again, down before the wind let the sail away out so that we're sailing before the wind. When we come back on the wind, we must remember pull the sail in as we turn. When we get around close to the wind, we can push the tiller towards the sail, come about, change sides, and we're around again. Now we've shown you quite a few things about sailing,

and I hope that you've never, if you've never sailed yourself, you will give it a try. When sailing, you must be very careful because you know that accidents may happen, but if you do happen to have trouble and turn the boat over, it is no cause for a line, because we know that you can sail, you'd never go in a boat unless you are able to swim. We know that, that you won't go in the boat without being able to swim. Very important thing. You also know that you have life preserves in the boat, and you know how to wear them.

Now there are three rules that you should follow in case you do cap size. One is that we must stay by the boat. Don't ever attempt to swim away from the boat. Stay with the boat because the boat is a very good life preserver, and you'll be safe if you do this. Then the second rule is to look around and locate your crew, so that you're sure that he's all right and is safe. And thirdly, keep calm, and wait for the rescue launch to come out and pick you up. Well, I've enjoyed being with you today, and I hope that I'll see you again, and until then, happy sailing. The art

and pleasure of sailing is practiced by Jerry Reed of MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and by Jeff Nelson. We'll take a crack at sailing again soon, and we all hope you'll be with us when we do. Until then, this is Al Benford saying, so long. The name of this program, as always, is What's New? So next time we'll find out even more about the world we're in, and the bigger world that's in us. This is National Educational Television.