Alex Schulte: Hi, I am Alex Schulte with the Washington Sailing Marina's Summer Sailing School and I am teaching you how to sail. This is sailing up wind. As I said before you can't sail towards the wind or anywhere between 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock. In order to get up wind though you have to do something called tacking up wind. The way you do this is you put yourself on a close-hauled course towards 2 o'clock or 10 o'clock, stay on this course for a while and then tack and put yourself on the other close-hauled course.

You keep tacking up wind in order to work your way to an up wind area. While tacking up wind if you do not complete a tack you will be stuck in irons. This is when the sail is flapping over your head and you are actually moving backwards. In order to get out of irons you will push your main-sail using your boom all the way to one side, this will make your boat go backwards. Next you will point your tiller away from the sail which will make your boat turn backwards. When you are no longer in irons you can easily sail across to the other side, so it fills with wind and put your tiller straight. Now you can sail away. That was sailing up wind, next is capsize recovery and how to avoid a capsize when sailing.