all his sails are flapping and the vessel loses her way, and that at the next moment he has brought the wind almost abeam and is sailing away to leeward. He has a tendency to push his helm hard up and hard down alternately, thus correcting one error with such violence that he at once falls into the opposite error.
Steering becomes in time a second instinct, and cannot be taught in books; but the following hints may prove useful to the novice. When steering, stand or sit on the weather-side of the deck. The angle at which the burgee at the masthead is blowing out will show you whether you are too much off the wind when sailing close-hauled. If you are sailing too near the wind the shaking of the sail will warn you. When you see the luff of the jib and mainsail just lifting slightly, you are sailing as near the wind as you should be. The novice therefore, when steering full and bye, should always have his eyes on the sails and the burgee. But when practice has made him an experienced helmsman he will need no such guides; the feel of the tiller will then tell him whether he is steering rightly, and with a sensitive hand he will hold the helm at exactly the right angle to keep her on her course, moving it but very slightly—almost imperceptibly—now and again, instead of ever passing it backwards and forwards from hard up to hard down, as he used to do in the early days of his novitiate.
The best of all guides is the feel of the wind on
