The best place to sit is with the wind at your back - this is called upwind - and just in front of the tiller. If the boat tends to heel over with the wind, you can bend back and get your weight farther outboard. Your forward hand, or that nearest the bow, should be used to hold the mainsheet, or rope, and the back hand the tiller. The tiller itself should be used as little as possible, and pushing it away from you turns it into the wind, and towards you turns the boat away from the wind.
You use the mainsheet to keep the sail operating properly. If it starts to flutter, or 'luff', you should pull it in until stops luffing. You should never pull a sail too tight or it will lose driving power. It should be just tight enough to stop luffing. If you are unsure how tight a sail is, let it out until it starts to luff, and then slightly adjust the trim to stop it. You will have to do this each time you change course, or the wind changes direction.
There are directions in which you cannot sail because the boat will be in the wrong direction for the wind. If your boat stops while it is pointing into the wind, then you should push the sale forward and reverse the rudder. Then let the sail out till it catches the wind, after which you can trim it properly and start sailing again. If you are sailing into the wind, you will have to tack the boat in the direction closest to the wind that you can sail, which is about 35 degrees. You will then have to tack to the other side of the wind to make progress in the direction that you want to go.
Doing this with the wind behind you is called jibing, which is done slightly differently since the boat will be moving at almost full power with the wind behind. You have to do this because you will not find it easy to sail with the wind directly behind you. Tacking and jibing are specific skills that you will learn while sailing, and are the subject of another article.
How to Sail a Boat: The Basics and Sail Control was originally published at http://www.globallifenow.com
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