When you wish your boat to turn to the right push your helm to the left. This will push the rudder to the right and turn the boat in that direction. When you wish your boat to turn to the left push your helm to the right. In other words, starboard your helm and you will turn to the port ([Fig. 128]). Port your helm and you will turn to the starboard ([Fig. 129]).
From a reference to the diagram you may see that when you port your helm you move the tiller to the port side of the boat, and when you starboard your helm you move your tiller to the starboard side of the boat ([Fig. 128]), but to ease your helm you move your helm toward the centre of the boat—that is, amidships.
How to Sail a Boat
If you fasten the bottom of a kite to the ground, you will find that the wind will do its best to blow the kite over, and if the kite is fastened to the mast of a toy boat, the wind will try to blow the boat over.
In sailing a boat the effort of the wind apparently has but one object, and that is the upsetting of the boat. The latter, being well balanced, is constantly endeavoring to sit upright on its keel, and you, as a sailor, are aiding the boat in the struggle, at the same time subverting the purpose of the wind to suit your own ideas. It is an exciting game, in which man usually comes out ahead, but the wind gains enough victories to keep its courage up.
Every boat has peculiarities of its own, and good traits as well as bad ones, which give the craft a personal character that lends much to your interest, and even affects your sensibilities to the extent of causing you to have the same affection for a good, trustworthy craft that you have for an intelligent and kind dog or horse.
A properly balanced sail-boat, with main sheet trimmed flat and free helm, should be as sensitive as a weathercock and act like one—that is, she ought to swing around until her bow pointed right into the "eye of the wind," the direction from which the wind blows. Such a craft it is not difficult to sail, but it frequently happens that the boat that is given to you to sail is not properly balanced, and shows a constant tendency to "come up in the wind"—face the wind—when you are doing your best to keep her sails full and keep her on her course. This may be caused by too much sail aft. The boat is then said to carry a weather helm.
Weather Helm.—When a boat shows a constant tendency to come up in the wind.
Lee Helm.—When a boat shows a constant tendency to fall off the wind—that is, when the wind blows her bow to the leeward. This is a much worse trait than the former, and a boat with a lee helm is a dangerous boat. It may be possible to remedy it by adding sail aft or reducing sail forward, which should immediately be done.