“I think we’ll get five or six knots out of her,” Jerry replied thoughtfully. “That’s not fast, but it’s only a couple of knots slower than the fastest. You see now what I mean?”
Sandy nodded, then said, “I’m with you, Jerry. Now that I know a little bit about it, I sure think you’re right. I’d much rather have a boat we can sleep on and take on trips up and down the coast than a racer that doesn’t even go so fast! Besides, I’d be pretty foolish to think about any other kind of boat at all, wouldn’t I? I don’t even have the least idea of how to sail this one yet! Come on, Jerry, start showing me!”
As Jerry carefully explained the different parts of the rigging, the complicated-looking series of wires and ropes around the mast began to look a whole lot simpler to Sandy. The first thing he learned was that not much of the rigging moved or was used for actual sailing of the boat. The parts that didn’t move were called “standing rigging,” and if you eliminated them from your thoughts, it made the “running rigging” comparatively easy to understand.
“You have to learn about the rigging first,” Jerry said. “The idea is simple enough. The standing rigging is used to support the mast and keep it from bending to either side or to the front or back when the sails start to put pressure on it. The standing rigging is every line or cable you see that comes from the top of the mast or near it down to the outer edge of the deck or to the bow or stern.”
Sandy looked about the little sloop, and noticed that this seemed to take care of more than half of what he saw.
“The running rigging,” Jerry went on, “is used to raise and lower the sails and to control their position to catch the wind when you’re sailing. The lines that are used to raise and lower the sails on the mast are called halyards. They work just like the ropes on a flagpole. The other kind of running rigging—the lines used to control the way the sails set—are called sheets. You’d think that a sheet was a sail, wouldn’t you? It isn’t, though. It’s the line that controls a sail.”
“I think I understand so far,” Sandy said, “but don’t you think it would be easier for me to learn if we went out for a sail and I could see everything working?”
“Right,” Jerry said. “That’s just what I was going to say next. Telling you this way makes me feel too much like a schoolteacher!”
Jerry decided that it would not be a good idea to try to sail away from the dock, because the part of the harbor they were in was so crowded. There would be little room to maneuver with only the light morning winds to help them. The best thing to do, he concluded, was to move the boat to a less crowded part of the harbor. At the same time, he would teach Sandy the way to get away from a mooring. In order to do all this, Jerry explained, they would row out in the dinghy, towing the sloop behind them. Once out in open water, they would tie the dinghy behind them and pull it along as they sailed.
Together they unlashed the dinghy, which was resting on chocks on the cabin roof. Light and easy to handle, the dinghy was no trouble at all to launch, and in a minute it was floating alongside, looking like a cross between a canoe and a light-weight bathtub.