Hello everyone!
I am fairly new here. I have never sailed in my life. I am currently landlocked and am unable to get any direct hands-on experience. I found and joined this forum for 2 main reasons: 1.) to learn as much as I can from experienced sailors, and 2.) the hope that someone here
might be willing to give a guy like me a chance on their boat.
The focus of this post is number 1.). What can a person like me do in the meantime to learn as much as possible about sailing? Can any of you experienced sailors offer any advice or teach us any skills that we can learn academically that will help us if/when we finally get the chance to board a ship? Do you know any good websites for learning what we need to learn?
Perhaps it seems strange to try to learn in this manner, but for me it has been an effective method. I learned to snowboard in exactly this way. Before I went snowboarding for the first time, I studied up on it as much as possible, everything from technical details about snowboards and their properties, how to stand on the board, how to turn, how to do more advanced turns, etc. I got all of this into my head, and the first time I went snowboarding all I had to do was teach my body what my head already knew and learn what all of the things I had only read about actually felt. I was able to become fairly comfortable on a snowboard in a single day, and on the second day I was comfortable enough to ride some of the more advanced courses. Obviously snowboarding is not sailing.
However, I'd like to try to do a similar thing with sailing: learn as much as I can before hand so that when I actually do have the chance to get on a boat, I already have a good idea of what needs to be done, how it is done, etc. and only need to teach my body and hands how it actually feels to do these things, as well as how those things apply specifically to the boat I am on.
So, please post links to sites you think are effective in teaching what a complete newbie needs to know about sailing, or give your own advice in the thread, or both. I could of course Google these things, but I don't know enough about sailing to differentiate good advice from bad, which is why I am asking all of you experienced sailors. I am looking for any good information from basic to advanced:
- basic sailing theory
- sail and boat design
- tying knots (I found one site which seems to be good:
Grog's Animated Knots. others are appreciated)
- useful sailing terminology and language (I have downloaded the
free dictionary linked elsewhere on this site. Excellent!)
- daily life and activities on board a ship (everything from good cooking methods in the galley to what is expected on watch to things that should absolutely never be done on board a ship to...)
- tips and tricks that you have picked up that may not be commonly known
- tips and tricks that you have picked up that are so commonly known that no one ever talks about them
- anything else
Please help us landlocked newbies do as much as we can to become competent crew before we even set foot on a boat.
Any and all advice, be it in thread or links to good sites, is of course appreciated. As always, thanks for your time.
Happy sailing.
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