How to Sail Upwind

Knowing how to sail upwind requires some basic knowledge about your boat, the wind and sailing maneuvers, as well as practice. Learn how to sail upwind in this sailing video.

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Know the
Know beam, close hull, close reach
Tack to change directions

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As a young man, Butch was standing at the sea, when he fell in love with what he saw, the wind pushing beautiful sailing vessels across the waters so effortlessly. It wasn't long before he was crewing for many racing skippers around the club's courses. As father time marched on, he became less content with his land career, so a few years ago he left it for a life on the Bay. He is currently the president and CEO of Tradewinds Sailing School and Club in the San Francisco Bay area.

BUTCH FLOREY: Say this is the wind, remember what I said, the boat cannot go more than 45 degrees to the wind, that is how we are sailing. So sails are in close home. If you go any further, the sail start to left, you slow down. So this is what we call the no-go zone. Remember I talked about the wind being 90 degrees to the boat, that was called beam. Every hour, our little boat is going like this. We are motoring out. We look--point to the area we want to go and if the wind is blowing directly against us, there is a no-go zone. I automatically know this island I want to go sailing to is in my no-go zone. So I have to do what? I have to tack, close home, tack which means I change directions through the wind and here we go. We started on wind coming over our starboard side; we tack through the wind, that turns the boat. The wind will be on our port side, if we tack again, the wind will be on our starboard side. We tack again; the wind will be on our port side.

How to Sail Upwind Video

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