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Learning to sail takes time, effort, and more information than can be summarized briefly. If you would like to learn to sail, keeping a few basics in mind will sustain you through a process that will likely immerse you in strange terminology, expose you to thrilling dangers (real and perceived) and force you to learn actions and techniques that seem to defy common sense.

The best way to learn to sail is to find someone to teach you. Next best is to read. Many, many excellent instructional books are available; two recommended titles are listed below.

It is possible to teach yourself to sail! Humans have been doing it for untold centuries.

Start small. Find a little sailboat with one sail, and a reasonably small body of water. A decent-sized pond, a lake, a broad, slow stretch of river, or a sheltered ocean cove can be your training ground, provided the presence of light winds.

Start learning the terminology immediately! Once it becomes second nature to call each part, feature, action and technique by its proper name, you will be better able to communicate with other sailors, eliminating confusion and misunderstandings. This could save your life someday!

Looking at your sailboat, you will see a tiller and rudder in the back ("stern") of the boat. The tiller is the arm or bar that directs the rudder, which actually steers the boat. Therefore, the tiller is your steering wheel. You'll soon see that, using it behind you, it's different from a steering wheel. Pushing it to your left ("port" is the left side of your boat) will turn the boat to the right ("starboard") and vice versa. Don't be confused, it will soon seem perfectly natural to you.

Your sail, the most easily recognizable feature of your boat, is your engine. In a small boat, this is usually already raised, ready to use. It will be flapping loose in the breeze. Look for a rope (ropes are called "lines" on a sailboat) leading from the base of the sail, probably attached to a stick or bar, called a "boom." This line is your "sheet." The sheet is the accelerator of the sailboat.

The bare basics of sailing then are to steer your boat with your tiller while speeding up or slowing down using the sheet to change the sail's angle to the wind.

Notice that there is no brake! It is possible to stop a sailboat by turning into the wind, but it is best to think of your boat as sliding on ice. Once in motion, it will continue to move for a long time! Once you get comfortable with this fact, you will learn to judge how

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