Honestly, dear, this has never happened to me before!

I was fortunate that I heeded Steve and Rune's advice.

Tie down your tiller!

I've been sailing for 5 years, and not once has the tiller come out of the rudder head.  Until this week.

The Laser's rudder head is on the boat pretty securely.  The clip does a good job of keeping it in place, and some have additional pins or split rings to back the clip up.  The tiller, however slides into the rudder head, and there are a few, unreliable, ways to keep it in place:

• friction - jam it in there, and hope it stays
• the pin -- there is a single pin to hold the tiller in the rudder head, but it can fall out
• the rudder downhaul -- the rudder can pivot up and down.  Except when you're coming into shallow water, you want the rudder down, and that's what pulling on the downhaul does.  The line can then be cleated onto the tiller (which also holds the tiller in place), but is pretty easy to release.

For two years, I sailed with these three mechanisms conspiring to hold the tiller in place.  And it worked.  Then Steve and Rune advised me to additionally tie the downhaul into a loop past the cleat.  They said that if the cleat/pin came undone, then this would at least prevent you from loosing the tiller (which doesn't float).  I figured (at the time) "why bother, this works fine as is!" but heeded the advice of the gurus anyway.

This week, I inserted the pin incorrectly, and didn't notice.  On the water, in heavy winds, I all-of-a-sudden felt the tiller come out of the rudder head, in the middle of a tack.  I was still holding the tiller, but almost capsized.  If I had gone into the drink, there's a good chance I would have lost the tiller to the bottom of the Ottawa had I not tied the downhaul post-cleat.

So yeah, tie down your tiller!

Sailing beginner's tips

I was out a couple of days ago, and I noticed a few folks on the water making "rookie mistakes".  Not that there's a problem with that -- we were all rookies once, and even the folks who have been going out for 30 years make them.  I'm sure there are many things I do that some would consider rookie moves.

Most of the sailing blogs I read focus on the high-performance sailor.  There's little on them for the person just starting their adventure.  So I figured I'd address some of common things I see beginners do.

Tiller grip: The "frying pan" vs "microphone" grip (I've also seen this called "dagger" grip). When holding the tiller (or tiller extension), hold it like a a microphone.  Don't bend your wrist and hold it like a frying pan.  It feels awkward for about 5 minutes, and then feels much more comfortable.

Holding the sheet: do NOT wrap it around your hand to improve grip.  Especially in high winds.  it will squeeze your hand and leave you with bruises, or worse.  If you're having trouble gripping the sheet, you can

• replace the sheet with a thicker line
• wear gloves that make the effective size of the line thicker
• do exercises to improve grip strength

Hand-over-hand sheeting: Hold the sheet "mainly" in your forward hand, but hold the slack in the back-facing hand (yes, even if you're holding the tiller).  This lets you sheet in by moving your hands together, move your forward hand down the line, and re-grip.

Behind-the-back passing: When you tack (or gybe), you ultimately end up switching which hand holds the tiller extension, and which holds the sheet.  I find it most effective to (as I'm switching sides), face forward, place both hands behind my back, move the tiller to the new hand (it's now holding both sheet and tiller), sit down on the new side of the boat.  Only once I'm settled do I grab the sheet with the new control hand (and I'm already in my hand-over-hand sheeting position).

Keep it flat!  Do you have too much weather helm?  You're not keeping the boat flat enough.  Are you slower than everyone else on the course?  Flatten that boat.  Unable to point?  Flatten, to solve your problems!  A dinghy is meant to be sailed flat.  Keelboats, are a bit more complicated, especially approaching hull speed, but you can't go wrong keeping it flat.