Sailing Catamaran For Beginners Learn How to Sail a Catamaran

Today on Living Hakuna. The first thing we put up is our main sail. We're looking for the battens which is those little things at the end of the sail. It's not only a test for you guys, it's a test for Andrea. She never does this thing. I'm Andrea, that's Alejo and those are our bears Ozzy and Echo. We left the corporate world in Miami to become digital nomads and chase the wind kiteboarding. Join us as we sail an adventure in our dream home Hakuna. Good morning people. So today we are in Compass Key and we'll be moving. We'll be sailing up north. We're starting our passage back to Miami. Well we're not starting, we started like last week but yeah we're gonna be moving. So today we will be teaching you how to sail a catamaran. I bet you didn't know that. You can't do that. You are. I don't even know how to sail my own catamaran. Yes so we'll teach you what we've learned. Here's the thing, there were supposed to be about eight knots of wind today and we woke up and there was like three knots. Let's get changed and show you how to sail. So right now we're actually motoring our way out of the islands. Let me show you. Basically right now we're here. We're the little boat right there right. So we had to cross that pink line right there is the line that we're supposed to follow and all those little red dots there are rocks. So basically we have to avoid those rocks right. So now we're gonna keep turning north as you can see here the wind is coming on a closed hole and is that right but once we head north which is that way right that way over there we're going to be able to um the wind is going to come a little bit more from the back so that's when we're going to be able to put our sails up. The first thing we put up is our main sail right. So first thing we do is we come up to our main sail. We come up to our main sail here and it's right now it's protected with the cover so what we do is we take all the clips out. So we always want to cover up the main sail so that it's this cover protected from the sun because obviously the more sun exposure it has to water to sun to all the elements um the faster you have to change it right. So yeah so the next thing we're going to do is we're going to remove this. This is what protects the halyard from going up. So we're going to remove this knot here and that automatically just releases. So now our halyard is free to go up. Let's see just make sure that there's nothing else and that our sail is free to go up. It's free. So now we're going to go back to our helm where our captain is. Hey captain! Baby so what are you doing right now? We're gonna get ready to head into the wind and lift our main sail. So this shows us the speed of the wind as you can see it's 6.3 and it shows us the direction of the wind so it's coming up here so it's coming 30 degrees from our boat right. So what we need to do is we need to make sure that this little line goes straight to our bow that way we can put our main sail up. We've made sure that we don't have any objects around us. We are the ocean is free for us to turn around. We're ready to put our sail. Okay so we're looking for the patterns which is those little loops at the end of the sail that they don't get stuck in. To release the tupping lift which is the line this one that's holding up the boom. Why do you release the tupping lift? Because now the sail is holding the boom. Line that you see right there this one and now the sail is completely boom right. Okay so now we're gonna turn head north so we can continue heading towards um Nassau and then eventually Miami. Now what else do we need to do to our sail? We need to release the belly right? I guess so go It's not only a test for you guys it's a test for Andrea she never does this thing so she's asking me oh what do I do I don't know you tell me. Okay sorry. Alejo calls it the belly it's the main sheet so we're gonna release the main sheet so it looks like it has a little more belly and it just grabs more wind so it doesn't like. So this is my main this gray line here now we're sailing and now we have to put our jib out because there's very little wind uh so we need to put all our sails out as much as we can so we can go as fast as we can right. Now we have a lot of mess here so we need to coil all these lines up. Do we put the main the jib out first? I don't do anything usually because I never do this I'm just here in a teaching practice. Okay so we're gonna coil it up. How do you coil? Oh so how do you coil? So you hold it with your hand with your left hand well it depends if you're a righty or a lefty. I'm a lefty so I hold this one with my left and then I just make little circles. Now what our sailing instructor taught us don't do this you're not an electrician you're a sailor not an electrician so that's what you that's what you don't do you have to look like a professional sailor. So you go like this right baby? Am I doing them too small? No? Okay guys so now main sail off it's time to put our jib out. Our jib is the smaller sail that goes from the roller furler on the bow of the boat so I'll show you guys. This is our jib and to put our jib out you don't really have to be facing the wind or anything like that like you do with the main sail you can just pull it out at any time so we're gonna do that. We're going to release our roller furler line and we're going to hold it here with us. We want to make sure that we keep one line on our roller because if not it can get tangled and if this gets tangled from this direction we need to pull the line from the not this side so this is our other line I wanted to do the other one because that one I could use the electric winch with this one we have to use the manual winch. So the first thing we're gonna do we're just gonna open this one so it's just completely loose and it's not going to block us from pulling our sail. We're going to go around one and then we go over now we take our winch out we take our break and we're just going to start pulling pulling. I was going to do the one teaching you but he's feeling lazy today. So we only had one engine on because we have really strong engines so we don't really need two engines at once so we go both of them make sure both of them are in neutral we check that our the reps are almost in zero and then we can press stop and off there you go and now we're officially sailing. We're only at 3.4 knots we're actually going really slow because we only have we only have 4.5 knots the wind is extremely extremely light today right it would be a really good day to put up our parasailor but it ripped a little bit the last time we used it so I don't know we don't want to pull it up before we fix it because then it might continue ripping. We're going to feed the dogs because they start chasing because they want food as soon as they wake up they want their food so watch once they hear me coming into the room where they know their food is they go crazy. Yep there they are as soon as they hear it right excuse me I need to put medicine because Echo has like um an immune disease an autoimmune disease that's what it's called so for a natural medicine something will help. Let's see how we're doing at two knots our speed just went down to two knots the wind is so bad right now it's not even funny so the reason why there's we're not always sitting at the helm we have an autopilot which is amazing I don't know who can actually go sailing without an autopilot because you would have to keep your hand on your steer at all times and it would be really annoying thank god we have an autopilot we just set the direction it just keeps going going so all we have to do is just adjust the sails as the wind shifts or as the wind moves so yeah when sailing your catamaran you'll have to adjust your sails according to the wind direction if the wind is coming on a 40 to 50 degree angle it's called a close hold where you'll have to keep your sails as trimmed as possible to keep them from luffing this is also as close to the wind as you can go as the wind direction changes on a 50 to 70 degree angle you'll open up your sails just a bit this point of sail is called close reach which is a bit easier than sailing on a close hold but this is where it starts to get fun sailing on a beam reach is the fastest and easiest point of sail the wind is on the side of your boat on a 70 to 90 degree angle so you'll sail with your sails out halfway on a broad reach you'll be heading a bit farther downwind so you'll have to let your sails out a bit more since you'll be sailing on a 90 to 120 degree angle from the wind you should see your sails twisting up a bit the last point of sail is going on a run or going downwind where the wind will be 120 to 180 degrees from your boat with the wind directly behind you this is the trickiest point of sail to steer and it can be quite unstable on a run your sails can be let out on opposite sides of the boat to catch the wind or you would preferably be sailing a spinnaker or pair sailor right now we have 4.49 at a speed of 2.4 knots ladies and gentlemen so the wind died oh it's coming back on but we're going at 1.5 knots we're barely moving but we'll see let's see what happens we're not in a hurry people or not today worst case scenarios we'll just go to the other side of the exhumant and we'll we'll anchor for the day and then meanwhile guys i'm cleaning up like we do every day thank god we have a little broom by here look how much hair we get every single day from the dogs so this is what we have to we have to clean up every single day because if not it gets really messy so yeah pick up all the stuff put away the dishes put away dinner last night um so yeah that's kind of what we do in the mornings and now we're gonna make breakfast we're gonna make some protein pancakes cold water in our thermos in our bottles since we don't have ice no ice maker for us how fast are we going like 1.2 like how many miles per hour is 1.2 so people can like know how really slow we're going one mile per hour less is it yeah we had to put the engines on we had like four knots of wind as you can see we have our sails up but they're not really doing much because the wind is so bad so we were moving at like a knot maybe less no we were moving at a knot just because basically not because of the wind but because we're like kind of on a current so the current's been pushing us north but yeah we needed to go a little bit faster because if not we're just never gonna make it there uh so we turned on the engine so even if we just go a little bit faster um just as long as we turn on one engine it would like like right now like our engines are are really really good they are 75 horsepower engines each one and they're turbo like so they're really good engines right so anyway so right now i'm going on like um i'm not even going at 2,000 reps and it gives us enough speed to go like at four knots just using one engine 4.2 so he asked me to go a little bit slower because he's putting the rods and stuff and then once we put it like 2,000 2,200 uh we just got like almost six knots so it's really good we don't spend that much gas only use one engine um diesel non-gas whatever so yeah yeah guys so now we're going to lower the sail so because it's so light the wind today has been really bad but barely any wind at all so basically normally it would go against the wind and then again put the halyard down but because there's no wind at all it's coming straight from back as you can see the sail's really not moving it's not doing anything at all uh what i'm gonna do is i'm just going to tighten the top um the topping lift just basically do what we did before but backwards so we're gonna go around once twice three times and there on our topping lift just enough for it to hold the boom we're going to go around on the halyard twice we're just gonna do this so that it doesn't come down and hurt my fingers so we do it once twice and then we open the clutch lily's on the line and the sail is going to start coming down keep going keep going keep going and it keeps going bringing the sails down down shoot can you bring the sail this way so see the sail went down to the left because obviously it should be done um going straight against the wind but because we only have like two knots i didn't think it would make much of a difference but obviously the sail did go to the other side it wouldn't have done that if we would have gone against the wind but whatever there's only two winds two two knots of wind right now so yeah we just fixed it you'll notice sail didn't go up go down completely so we have to go to our sail pull it down um and then tie it up again just like we did when we were you can barely catch the fish maybe you just you had never used it before that's why good boy okay guys so this is where we leave you and i hope you guys enjoyed the video and learned something new make sure to subscribe hit the little bell button and check out our social media our facebook our instagram and our patreon account