49 Fun Facts About Sailing

Facing forward on a boat, where is starboard?

To your right is starboard, from Old English steorbord, the 'steer side', because early ships were steered with an oar held over that side.

Why was the steering oar on early ships placed on the starboard side?

Most people are right-handed, so a helmsman at the stern held the steering oar on the right; ships then docked on the opposite side, which became the loading or 'port' side.

What was the older name for the port side of a ship?

Larboard came from 'ladebord', the loading side; the Royal Navy replaced it with 'port' in 1844 partly because it sounded too much like starboard when shouted.

Which manoeuvre turns a boat's bow through the wind so the wind moves to the other side?

Tacking turns the bow through the wind; a series of tacks in a zig-zag lets a boat make progress toward a destination directly upwind.

What is the lowest inside part of a hull, where water collects, called?

Bilge is the lowest inside part of the hull, where water and spills collect; a bilge pump clears it overboard.

Roughly how many degrees either side of the wind is a sailing craft's 'no-go zone'?

45 degrees either side of the wind is the usual no-go zone; sailing as close to that edge as possible is called beating, with the sails close-hauled.

A boat sailing at 90 degrees to the wind is on which point of sail?

Beam reach is the point of sail at 90 degrees to the wind; at about 135 degrees it becomes a broad reach, and at 180 degrees the boat is running.

The spar that runs along the foot of a mainsail to control its shape is called what?

The boom is the spar along the foot of the mainsail; traditionally wood, booms are now mostly aluminium or carbon fibre.

What is the line used to hoist a sail up the mast called?

Halyard is a contraction of 'haul yard', from the days when the line raised the yard rather than the sail itself.

The large balloon-like sail flown when sailing off the wind is thought to be named after which yacht?

Sphinx, a yacht that set such a sail in the Solent in 1865, is the usual origin given for 'spinnaker'; the word's first recorded use came in 1866.

A sailboat with a single mast, one headsail and one mainsail is called what?

Sloop is by far the most common rig on modern cruising and racing yachts: one mast carrying a mainsail and a single headsail.

Which of these distinguishes a two-masted ketch from a yawl?

The mizzen is stepped forward of the rudder post on a ketch; on a yawl the smaller mizzen sits aft of the rudder post, often right at the stern.

The triangular mainsail rig used on most modern yachts takes its name from which island?

Bermuda gave its name to the rig, which is also called the Marconi rig because the tall stayed mast reminded people of early radio masts.

The word 'catamaran' comes from a word in which language?

Tamil kattumaram means 'logs bound together'; the original craft was a raft of lashed logs rather than a twin-hulled boat.

Which seafaring peoples invented the catamaran and spread across the Indian and Pacific Oceans?

The Austronesians built the twin-hulled and outrigger canoes whose crab-claw sails carried them from Taiwan as far as Madagascar and Easter Island.

One knot equals one nautical mile per hour, which is exactly how many kilometres per hour?

1.852 km/h is exactly one knot because the international nautical mile was fixed at 1,852 metres in 1929; the name comes from the chip log, a knotted line paid out to measure speed.

A nautical mile was historically defined as one minute of what?

Latitude is measured in degrees and minutes of arc along a meridian, and one such minute was the nautical mile; that makes the Earth's polar circumference close to 21,600 nautical miles.

Francis Beaufort, who devised the wind-force scale in 1805, was a naval officer serving which country?

Britain's Royal Navy was Beaufort's service; his original 1805 scale described the effect of wind on a frigate's sails rather than wind speeds.

The earliest Egyptian depiction of a boat under sail dates to roughly when?

3100 BCE is roughly the date of the painted Egyptian pot showing a boat under sail; the Nile's northward current and southerly prevailing wind made it an ideal place to develop sailing.

The America's Cup was first raced in 1851 around which island?

Isle of Wight was circled in the 1851 race in which the schooner America beat a fleet of Royal Yacht Squadron yachts, and the trophy took her name.

What informal nickname does the America's Cup trophy go by?

The Auld Mug is a bottomless sterling silver ewer made by Garrard & Co in 1848, three years before it was first raced for.

For how many years did the New York Yacht Club hold the America's Cup before losing it in 1983?

132 years, from 1851 to 1983, was the New York Yacht Club's hold on the Cup, often described as the longest winning streak in sport.

What design innovation did the 1983 challenger that finally took the America's Cup use?

A winged keel, designed by Ben Lexcen for Alan Bond's Australia II syndicate, was kept hidden under a skirt at the dock.

Which American skipper lost the Cup in 1983 and won it back in 1987?

Dennis Conner lost the Cup with Liberty in 1983 and won it back with Stars & Stripes 87 off Fremantle; the 1992 film Wind was loosely based on the story.

The 2013 America's Cup was raced in which type of boat?

AC72 foiling wing-sail catamarans were the 2013 boats; Oracle Team USA came back from 1-8 down to win 9-8 and keep the Cup in San Francisco.

Which syndicate won the America's Cup in 2017, then defended it in 2021 and 2024?

Emirates Team New Zealand beat Oracle in 2017, then defended in Auckland in 2021 and Barcelona in 2024, far from the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron's home.

Who was the first person to sail single-handed around the world?

Joshua Slocum finished the voyage in 1898; his book Sailing Alone Around the World is a travel classic, and he vanished at sea aboard the same boat in 1909.

What was the rebuilt oyster boat that completed the first solo circumnavigation in the 1890s called?

Spray, 36 feet long and gaff-rigged, could famously hold a course for long stretches with nobody at the helm.

Who became the first person to sail solo, non-stop around the world, in 1969?

Robin Knox-Johnston was the only one of nine starters to finish the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, and he gave his prize money to Donald Crowhurst's family.

Which Golden Globe Race sailor abandoned the race while well placed and sailed on to Tahiti?

Bernard Moitessier, in a strong position to win, turned away from the finish and kept sailing to Tahiti, a voyage he recounted in The Long Way.

Who made the first solo non-stop circumnavigation westward, against the prevailing winds, in 1971?

Chay Blyth sailed British Steel east-to-west around the world in 292 days, finishing in August 1971, the first solo non-stop voyage 'the wrong way'.

In 1966-67 Francis Chichester sailed around the world with a single stop, in which Australian port?

Sydney was his only stop; the voyage in Gipsy Moth IV took 226 days of sailing and he was knighted on his return.

In 2005, which British sailor broke the record for the fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe?

Ellen MacArthur's time of just over 71 days beat Francis Joyon's record; she later founded a charity promoting the circular economy.

The Vendee Globe, the solo non-stop round-the-world race, starts and finishes in which French town?

Les Sables-d'Olonne in the Vendée hosts the start and finish; the race was founded by Philippe Jeantot in 1989 and has been held every four years since 1992.

Australia's famous Boxing-Day-start ocean race runs from its largest city to which port?

Hobart, on Tasmania's Derwent River, is the finish; the first race was held in 1945 and the course runs roughly 630 nautical miles down the New South Wales and Tasmanian coasts.

How many sailors died in the storm-hit 1998 edition of Australia's Boxing Day ocean race?

Six sailors died and five yachts sank; winds were comparable to a low-category hurricane, and the disaster overhauled offshore safety rules.

The Fastnet Race is named after a rock off the coast of which country?

Ireland's Fastnet Rock, off County Cork, is the turning mark; the 1979 edition killed 15 sailors after a violent storm capsized dozens of boats.

The round-the-world race later renamed the Volvo Ocean Race was first sponsored by which British brewer?

Whitbread sponsored the race from its 1973 start; it became the Volvo Ocean Race in 2001 and was renamed The Ocean Race in 2019.

Which sailor won Olympic gold at four consecutive Games from 2000 to 2012?

Ben Ainslie won Laser gold in 2000 and Finn gold in 2004, 2008 and 2012, after a silver in 1996.

The single-handed Laser (ILCA) dinghy was co-designed in 1970 by which Canadian yacht designer?

Bruce Kirby drew the hull with Ian Bruce; the class became Olympic in 1996, and strict one-design rules keep every boat alike.

The Optimist, the small dinghy that children learn to race in, was designed in 1947 in which US state?

Florida's Clearwater is where Clark Mills drew it for the local Optimist club; the hull was the biggest that could be built from two sheets of eight-by-four plywood.

The clipper Cutty Sark, now preserved at Greenwich, was built in 1869 to carry which cargo?

Tea was the cargo she was built for, but the China route went to steamships within a few years and she soon switched to carrying Australian wool.

The Cutty Sark is named after a character wearing a short shirt in a poem by which writer?

Robert Burns's poem Tam o' Shanter gives the witch Nannie her 'cutty sark', and she is the ship's figurehead.

The clipper era effectively ended with the opening of which two shortcuts in 1855 and 1869?

Panama Railroad and Suez Canal openings, in 1855 and 1869, undercut the clippers' speed advantage; the rush had begun in 1843 with the race to bring China's cargoes home fastest.

What is the nautical term for a boat leaning over to one side under the force of the wind?

Heeling is resisted by a catamaran's wide stance, while keelboats rely on ballast low in the keel to bring the boat back upright.

What is the line that controls the angle of a fore-and-aft sail relative to the wind called?

The sheet trims the sail in or out to set its angle to the wind, while other control lines shape the sail's curve, flatter in stronger wind.

A boat that keeps trying to turn up into the wind is said to have what?

Weather helm arises when the centre of effort on the sails sits behind the hull's centre of lateral resistance; the opposite tendency is lee helm.

Which sailing craft typically has the least resistance to forward motion of any type?

Iceboats, freed from hull drag in water, see a narrower range of apparent wind angles and can outrun the true wind downwind.

What name is given to the calm high-pressure zones between the trade winds and the westerlies?

The horse latitudes are the subtropical high-pressure belts near 30 degrees, where light winds are common; long-distance sailors plan around them along with the fronts that accompany highs and lows.