“No,” Jerry said. “Nothing will happen when we hoist the sail. It’s like raising a flag. The flag doesn’t fill with wind and pull at the flagpole like a sail, does it? It just points into the wind and flutters. That’s just what the mainsail will do. You see, the boat is already pointing into the wind, because the wind has swung us around on the mooring. You look around and you’ll see that all the boats out here are heading in the exact same direction, toward the wind. When we hoist the sail, it’ll act just like a flag, and flap around until we’re ready to use it. Then we’ll make it do what we want it to by using the jib and controlling its position with the sheets. Look.”
Jerry hauled on the main halyard, and the sail slid up its tracks on the mast, squeaking and grating. As it reached the masthead, it fluttered and bellied loosely in the wind, doing nothing to make the boat move in any direction. Motioning to Sandy to take his place tugging at the halyard, Jerry jumped down into the cockpit.
The halyard ran from the pointed head of the sail up through a pulley at the top of the mast, then down to where Sandy was hauling on it. Below his hands, it passed through another pulley near Sandy’s feet, then back along the cabin roof. Jerry, from his position in the cockpit, grabbed the end of the halyard and hauled tight, taking the strain from Sandy. Then he tied it down to a wing-shaped cleat on the cabin roof near the cockpit.
This was done with a few expert flips of the wrist. The mainsail was up, and tightly secured.
“There,” Jerry said. “Now we’re almost ready. We won’t move at all until we get the jib up, and even then we won’t move unless we want to. When we want to, we’ll untie from the mooring and get away as neat as you please.”
They then took the jib out of its sail bag and made ready to hoist it. Instead of securing to the mast with slides on a track the way the mainsail had, the jib had a series of snaps stitched to its forward edge. These were snapped around the steel wire forestay, a part of the standing rigging that ran from the bow of the boat to a position high up on the mast. The jib halyard was fastened to the head of the jib, the snaps were put in place, and a few seconds of work saw the jib hanging in place, flapping before the mast. Then Jerry asked Sandy to pick up the mooring that they had tied to, and to walk aft with it.
“When you walk aft with the mooring,” Jerry explained, “you actually put some forward motion on the boat. Then, when you get aft and I tell you to throw the mooring over, you put the bow a little off the wind by doing it.”
Sandy untied the bow line from the mooring, and walked to the stern of the boat, holding the mooring float as he had been told. Then, when Jerry said “Now!” he threw the mooring over with a splash.
“With the jib flying and the boat free from the mooring and no longer pointing directly into the wind,” Jerry said, “the wind will catch the jib and blow our bow even further off. At the same time, I’ll steer to the side instead of straight ahead. As soon as our bow is pointing enough away from the wind, the breeze will strike our sails from one side, and they’ll start to fill. When the sails have caught the wind right, I’ll ease off on the rudder, and we’ll be moving ahead.”
By this time, the morning haze had “burned off” and the light breeze had freshened into a crisp, steady wind. As the head of the little sloop “fell away” from the direction from which the wind was coming, the sails swelled, the boat leaned slightly to one side, and a ripple of waves splashed alongside the hull. Sandy looked back and saw that the bow of the dinghy, trailing behind them, was beginning to cut a small white wave through the water.