The basic concept of sailing is quite simple, and sailing is something many people learn by themselves through trial and error. Young children are often the quickest to learn, because they do not try to complicate matters. It will be easier to discuss what is involved, however, if we use some standard nautical terms and the specific names for the parts of the boat. Refer to the Short List of Nautical Terms at the end of the site and figures 1 and 2 for clarification.  Do not try to completely absorb all of the material at once, but instead get some on-the-water experience. You can then come back to this material for a fuller understanding.In its simplest form, to sail you do little more than point the boat where you want to go and pull in the sail enough to keep it from LUFFING (i.e., keep it from shaking like a flag). It is not possible to sail straight into the wind, so if pulling in the sail does not stop the sail from luffing, the bow of the boat must be turned further away from the wind direction. When this is done the sail will automatically seek the LEEWARD side of the boat (the side away from the wind). As you can see, it is important that you keep track of the wind at all times particularly what you course is relative to the wind direction. Each change of the angle of the wind to the boat requires a sail adjustment. Diagrams and Text courtesy of Sailing and the Tech Dinghy Permission granted by: Harold "Hatch" Brown, MIT. Black and white clipart were provided by arttoday.com Created by: Nondini Naqui '02 Maintained by: Bonnie Dix Date Created: 7/27/00 Last Modified: 8/9/00