#tacking

It’s been a minute, so for this Random Nautical Fact I’m going back to basics with what it means to be on the port tack and what it means to be on the starboard tack.

If you are facing the front of the boat:

You are on the Port Tack if the wind is coming over the Port (left) side of the boat.

You are on the Starboard Tack is the wind is coming over the Starboard (right) side of the boat.

If you’re facing directly into the wind, you are what’s known as In Irons are you’re not going anywhere, no, literally, your boat is not moving except for whatever currents you might be in

If the wind is coming directly over the stern -- the back of the boat -- you’re running

If you are looking at me like “WTF are you on about”, as a cheat you can use the What Side of the Boat Are the Sails On trick for fore-and-aft or gaff-rigged vessels, i.e. Not Square Riggers: if the sails are on the starboard side, you are on the port tack, and if the sails are on the port side, you are on the starboard tack: meah, I know, it’s opposite and lots of people find that bit counterintuitive.

Also, if you’re on the port tack, you have to give way to vessels on the starboard tack. Rules of the road, as it were: boats on the starboard tack get right of way. (Right of Way/Stand-On probably deserves its own Random Nautical Facts entry but it’s midnight and I’m tired.)

  water; this caused me to tack about immediately, and change my design         1 with me tacking the care of... tacking the whole         2   finds me tacking naught. Blinded         3 when it reached me, tacking gracefully, and came         4   r y, LINE TO ME TACKING 1 » t*» •» i a 1 c» S 3 3 O s o 100** -i z " 3 5 l~~ * c* $ z fli.         5   wind caused me to tack towards Porama. Thus I landed         6 me, tacking on to it parts of... speech         7   me, tacking me         8 me, tacking on a shoe ; of course,         9   rather late in the day, found me tacking up the Bure         10 says he can see me tacking No. 14 silk on my sieves         11  

reads, OCR misreads, side-reads — sources

1 ex Jean de La Roque (1661-1745 *), A Voyage to Arabia the Happy, By the Way of the Eastern Ocean, and the Streights of the Red-Sea, Perform’d by the French for the first time, A.D. 1708, 1709, 1710. Together With a particular Relation of a Journey from the Port of Moka to the Court of the King of Yemen, in the second Expedition, A.D. 1711, 1712, 1713. Also, An Account of the Coffee-Tree and its Fruit... (London, 1730): 59 his Voyage dans l’Arabie heureuse (1716), Englished 2 ex deed of Goodman Andruss, tanner (narrated; signed by a mark and dated January 4, 1717) in Henry Bronson, The History of Waterbury, Connecticut; The Original Township embracing present Watertown and Plymouth, and parts of Oxford, Wolcott, Middlebury, Prospect and Naugatuck. With an appendix of biography, genealogy and statistics. (1858): 133 3 OCR misread of “me lacking naught” “Mutual Blindness” by C. A. C. H. in Godey’s Magazine (Philadelphia; September 1870): 228 (snippet only) see entire in different copy/scan, 228 4 ex “A Catamaran cutter – a queer craft coursing a North-Western prairie” in Farm Implement News (December 8, 1892): 24 5 ex snippet, dramatically inventive OCR misread of text (at 90ºcw), in chart showing naval evolutions during the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, February 14, 1797, in Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914), The Influence of Sea Power Upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812 (sixth edition, vol. 1 of 2, 1892): (facing) 223 6 ex “Missions of Oceania / Mission of the New Hebrides / Kaina’s Conversion.—His Baptism.—His Zeal and his Self-Sacrifice.” in Annals of the Propagation of the Faith 58 (1895): 299 7 ex J. W. Wilkins, “The International Submarine Telegraph Memorial” (interesting letter to the editor) in The Electrical Journal (November 6, 1896): 59 8 ex (an intelligent and well-composed) letter by John Minot (Portsmouth, April 20, 1725) in William Blake Trask, ed., Letters of Colonel Thomas Westbrook and Others Relative to Indian Affairs in Maine, 1722-1726 (1901): 100 9 ex Colin Harding (Acting-Administrator of North-West Rhodesia, Commandant Barotse Native Police), his In Remotest Barotseland: Being an Account of a Journey of over 8,000 Miles through the Wildest and Remotest Parts of Lewanika’s Empire (1904): 273 whew 10 ex G. F. Bradby, “The Haunted Boat” in The Cornhill Magazine (January 1905): 80-77 (80) 11  “Brain storms are still rampant in this land of ours, even among millers...” American Miller and Processor (November 1, 1912): 892-893

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mindful that few (if any) of these links will work in distant lands

So, sailboats and sailing ships turn by tacking (if the desired course is upwind, i.e. into the wind), which turns the ship’s bow (front) so that the side from which the wind blows changes, or by jibing (also called “wearing” on square-riggers) if the desired course is downwind, which turns the ship’s stern (rear end) through the wind, also changing the side the wind is blowing from. Either will turn the ship 90 degrees. One of the things about sailing is you always have to be aware of wind direction to figure out how to get where you want to go.

“Ready about” is the order to notify the crew that they will be tacking. The crew responds “Ready”, and the helmsman (the person at the wheel) will say “helm’s a lee”’ or “Lee O” to indicate they’ve started turning.

Then, once the skipper is happy with the direction the ship is heading, the order is “trim to course.”

Tl;dr: “Ready about! Helm’s a lee!” is probably what you’re looking for.