How to learn traditional sailing skills: Why learning historic boat handling skills make you a better yacht sailor

Can learning traditional boat handling skills make you a better yacht sailor? Historic vessel skipper Charlotte Hathaway explains why it can

I came to traditional sailing by accident, but now I’m here, I’m a convert. And that’s because sailing traditional boats will make you a better all-round sailor. Don’t believe me? “I agree with the proposition 100% having spent my life voyaging, racing and teaching in traditional craft,” says Tom Cunliffe. He literally wrote the book on gaff sailing and pretty much all other sailing topics as well.

Today I skipper the 104-year-old, 100-tonne, former Lowestoft fishing smack Excelsior, which operates as a sail training vessel in the North Sea and is still rigged and sailed authentically. I began sailing less than a decade ago when I dropped out of my previous life working in the arts and moved to the Caribbean, teaching English and eventually living on a little yacht.

I was mostly self-taught aside from occasional hops through the RYA syllabus, and eventually became confident enough to cruise single-handed in the Lesser Antilles. Initially I wasn’t remotely interested in tall ships, nor carried away by the romance of an old wooden schooner; I just wanted to sail.

But when a role came up on Excelsior as mate, just as I was fresh from achieving my Yachtmaster, the old hands promised me: “If you can sail Excelsior, you can sail anything.”

They also sagely pointed out that, while the Suffolk coast could be seen as flat and boring, I’d quickly learn one hell of a lot of seamanship from navigating its tides and sand banks. At 77ft Excelsior can be a heavy and ungainly beast at close quarters, and a headache to manoeuvre, which is exactly why I’ve learned more sailing her than I have on any modern-rigged yacht.

Seamanship skills

Andy Schell, founder of offshore sailing company 59° North, explains: “Seam’nship [Andy makes a point of taking the ‘man’ out of the equation] boils down to two simple fundamentals – the ability to anticipate; and the ability to adapt.

“[It] requires an understanding of the bigger picture and all the elements that come together during any kind of sailing trip, short or long – weather, ship, crew, nav, maintenance timelines etc. The most technical sailor will fail if they’re not paying attention to the chart, for example, and this happens all the time.”

There’s a lot that can feel unnecessarily challenging about sailing traditional boats. They were built with more limited materials than we have now, and usually designed with a particular region or purpose in mind (for example, Brixham trawlers vs Bristol pilot cutters). They might not be able to do something you’d take for granted with a modern rig, like point to windward or move in winds lighter than a Force 4!

Handling such a vessel requires more than simply the ability to sail a boat. You also need to know your environment. Off the coast of East Anglia, tides are critical to any passage Excelsior undertakes. There have been times when I’ve sat at the chart table while trying (foolishly) to beat to windward, looking at our ground track, and being quite satisfied that the plotter says we’re doing 1 knot.

Until I realise it’s 1 knot backwards, and if the crew are already sick, disheartened and miserable, and nobody has it in them to cook a meal, it’s only going to get a lot worse. Passage planning for where we need to be by certain times, based on predicted changes in the weather and tide, is crucial seamanship that could make or break a voyage.

Knowing that closer to the shore the tidal current will be weaker can impact your tactics significantly. On a swifter, more forgiving modern boat you may get away with less fastidious planning, but not on a traditional vessel.

The same goes for keeping an eye on changes in the weather well in advance. On a lightweight contemporary rig you can execute a swift tack or sail drop in minutes, but on a ship like Excelsior these manoeuvres take time and in strong winds a gybe might need two watches’ worth of crew.

Can you afford to wait until the watch change, or do you want to wake them up early? And if you’ve woken them up early, is there enough time for them to go back to bed afterwards before they’re due to take over?

Richard Titchener runs the Sea Change Sailing Trust, which sails a replica Thames Sailing Barge in Essex. He says. “Under sail, especially if you are relying on wind and tide to reach your destination, you are always trying to make the best of the conditions.

Effectively, you are always racing. Always looking to use the last of the fair tide that runs in the centre of the river with short tacks rather than the more relaxing young slack or ebb at the sides. Always picking up on the seaweed that may indicate a tide edge seemingly in the middle of the channel. And these days it’s studying with a forensic eye the speed and direction of turn in a distant wind turbine for signs of the sea breeze.”

But the trade-off is that one of the most thrilling seam’nship muscles I’ve begun to flex thanks to sailing Excelsior has been my ability to use the natural environment to my advantage.

With a vessel like ours, sometimes there is no other choice. For example, when leaving tidal berths, if the wind is blowing us on, no amount of springing will free us. But we can use the tidal stream to push the bow (or the stern) away from the pontoon. It’s the same for coming alongside.

Ferry gliding is extremely elegant in a heavy long-keeler and makes you look like a manoeuvring deity. When your passage involves turning in a tidal river, plan your turn for a moment you know the current is going to help you, not dangerously hinder you (and drive you sideways downstream as you battle against the opposing forces).

Maggie Adamson, who skippered the 125-year-old sail training vessel Swan of Lerwick, is double-handed offshore world champion as well as International Sail Trainer of the Year. She’s at home in both arenas, and has learned a great deal from each. “Everything is at a different pace on board traditional boats. There’s still the adrenaline rush and excitement of manoeuvres but you have to give things a bit more time and planning,” she says.

“I started offshore racing about the same time as I started skippering Swan so there are a lot of aspects that complement each discipline. In sail training it could be anything from managing your crew expectations, seasickness levels, to time management on schedule for port visits and weather. In both disciplines, sail choices and forward planning are extremely important, and so is food!’

Article continues below…

Using your sails

“What you learn from different rigs is creativity and learning to get the most out of the boat,” says Andy Schell. A gaff rig comes with a unique set of challenges, and when sailing an ex-fishing trawler, you really need a lot of drive to get going, meaning you need to understand what your arsenal of sails can do for you, and how to work your rig.

“Every sail on Swan is hoisted in a different way,” explains Maggie Adamson. “The main sail is gaff rigged, mizzen a standing lug, the jib is hoisted on a wire traveller system after hauling out the retractable bowsprit, the topsail is hoisted on her own yard and the foresail being the most straightforward, is permanently bent on the forestay. This gives you a great understanding of the different systems and running rigging that goes with it.”

A Swedish traditional boat enthusiast once told me that in Baltic regattas, if you’re the one racing on the British fishing trawler, you’ve got no excuses when you don’t win. I had definitely been doing something wrong, then.

Dinghy sailors would hop around the deck saying words like ‘slot’ and I used to roll my eyes, quipping that on Excelsior we don’t ‘trim’ our sails, more ‘arrange’ them. They’re either in or out, and there’s either two or five or eight of them up.

But I was so wrong. It’s really exciting when we have dyed-in-the wool gaff sailors on board, passing on their wisdom.

“Do you understand when the topsail needs to be flat and when it needs a bit of belly? We’re going downwind, so peak the gaff up a little higher and make the topsail more baggy, and we’ll speed up,” they tell me.

“And have you noticed there’s massive weather helm right now because we’re going upwind but the main is over-sheeted? There’s too much force to the aft of the boat and it’s pushing the stern around. You need to ease the main far more than you think because of the way the sail is shaped.

“Also, when you reef don’t reef the mainsail first, because you might not even need to. Adjusting the sails on the extremities will have a dramatic effect on the overall balance. Lose the topsail, reef the mizzen, house the bowsprit and use a smaller jib. Your centre of effort is now far lower and she’s sitting much more comfortably in this miserable gale.

“And when you’re tacking? Back the mizzen, to guide the stern round, then back the headsails just long enough to get the nose through the wind, and don’t use too much rudder or she’ll stall.” There is so much to learn.

Close quarters

I’ll confess that I’d never really used springs before docking Excelsior. On a large, heavy boat springs are everything. Using lines to warp yourself round tight spaces and control your movements around the dock is also extremely satisfying, and I recommend everyone experiments with it.

Did I mention that Excelsior has a 9ft tiller? My favourite turning trick is a well-deployed staysail, or even a quickly peaked mizzen. Our pirouette in Hartlepool marina using mainly staysail and a lot of forward and reverse has become legendary.

Always make sure you have a Plan B, because you carry a lot of momentum and there are usually more fragile boats everywhere. As Tom Cunliffe notes: “If you can come alongside with a 15ft bowsprit without murdering the harbourmaster, docking any modern yacht with a bow-thruster and spade rudder will be a breeze.”

Try Traditional

“I’ve always wanted to go even more traditional and have an open invite to sail on board Pride of Baltimore II, a gaff-rigged topsail schooner, just to see how they handle it all,” says Andy Schell. “There is always something to learn.”

Traditional sailing makes your life more difficult but teaches you so much: why a specific hull shape makes your yacht lie at anchor in such a way, or how to handle heavy loads without winches (a crash course in the use of purchases, but so useful if you have a gear breakdown on board).

There is a plethora of opportunities to try traditional sailing. My bias would be towards supporting a sail training charity like Excelsior Trust, who often subsidise their life-changing youth trips by offering adventures for adults, too. You can also find charter companies operating historic vessels, and National Historic Ships franchises a traditional seafaring course. Whichever you try, you’ll come back a better sailor.

Organisations offering traditional sailing opportunities

■ Excelsior Trust: theexcelsiortrust.co.uk
■ Swan Trust: swantrust.com
■ Sea Change Sailing Trust: seachangesailingtrust.org.uk
■ National Historic Ships: www.nationalhistoricships.org.uk/page/traditional-seafarer-introductory-certificate
■ Coastal Exploration Company: coastalexplorationcompany.co.uk
■ Classic Sailing: classic-sailing.com

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

The post How to learn traditional sailing skills: Why learning historic boat handling skills make you a better yacht sailor appeared first on Yachting World.