Introduction to Landsailing       © Terry Freeland -  2003 through 2009

    In order to bring you up to speed in the art of landsailing, you will need to be familiar with terminology, sailing theory and practice, points of sail, safety, and rules of the road. We will address each of these in order. To get you started with terminology, the is a drawing of a basic landyacht, with many of it's parts labeled. Familiarize yourself with them, it will help as we go along, and on the dry lake as well. The following information is presented based on sailing a Spirit landyacht, by Nord Design. Most of this information would be applicable to other landyachts as well.

Important: As you read the following material, keep notes and jot down anything you do not understand, and ask me about it on the dry lake and I will make it clear to you.

Sailing theory and Practice

    If you already know how to sail watercraft, or fly an airplane, some of this will be familiar to you. There are a few differences, and a few of them are big differences. If you do not know how to sail or fly, you may even have an advantage, you will not have to unlearn anything. For those of you not very familiar with physics, some of this will seem unlikely or impossible, if you don't understand something, don't worry about it too much, just accept as much as you can, the rest will be clarified on the dry lake.

    The first thing I want to tell you about is lift, it is what propels the landyacht. I won't get overly technical here, in fact, I will be simplifying to illustrate the point I am making. Lift is generated when air flows over the sail. This is the same thing that holds an airplane up in the air. While sailing the air will always be coming from the side, somewhat, this causes the sail to curve. As the air flows around the sail, it divides into two paths. On the windward side of the sail, the air can take a shortcut and travel in a straight line. On the leeward (pronounced lou-word) or downwind side of the sail, the air has to travel a longer path.

This causes the air molecules to 'stretch out', and this creates the partial vacuum or suction, we call lift. Lift has a direction, in other words, the sail is being pulled in a direction. The lift that is generated, is always 90° to the surface. Since our surface is curved, we have lift in lots of directions.

Now that we know lift is necessary to get the yacht moving, and that we need airflow over the sail, and we know that lift is 90 degrees to the sails surface, we can proceed to learn how to put lift to work for us. Let us start with a practical example. Suppose we are sitting in landyacht, with the wind blowing from our left (port) to our right (starboard) at 25 M.P.H.. We wish to go forward, so ideally, we need air flowing over our sail and the lift pointing forward. This is easy to accomplish. We let out our sheetline (the rope that controls sail position, until the sail is pointing almost straight at the wind.

In theory this is fine, in practice, we cannot let our sails out that far, because the sail hits the sidestay. In practice, we would pull the sail in until it is no longer in contact with the stay, and we will begin accelerating. What happens next, is something that water sailors know, but never experience to the degree that we do in a landyacht. As our landyacht begins to move forward, it creates induced wind. You may not know what this is, but you have experienced it. Imagine getting in your car on a windless day. You accelerate to 25 M.P.H. You roll down the window and stick your hand outside, what do you feel? That's right you feel wind, a 25 M.P.H. wind, as a matter of fact. Well, we experience the same thing in a landyacht. Let's imagine that our land yacht has accelerated to 25 M.P.H. We now have a real wind of 25 M.P.H., plus and induced wind of 25.M.P.H. The induced wind is blowing straight at the front (bow , rhymes with cow) of our landyacht. This tries to slow the landyacht down. What actually happens is the landyacht accelerated until the forward lift equals the rearward drag from the induced wind. That is the terminal velocity, the fastest the landyacht can go, unless we change something. Now we need to discuss apparent wind. Apparent wind is the wind we seem to feel in a given situation. In our example, the apparent wind direction is an average of the actual wind direction and the induced wind direction. In other words, it splits the difference.

Apparent Wind		Induced Wind
Actual Wind

Not only does the apparent wind have a direction which is a combination of the two other winds, but it has a velocity which is a combination as well. If you are thinking they add together, I'm sorry, the do not. If you know vectors and trigonometry, etc., you can figure it all out, but it is not that important. In our example above, the apparent wind velocity would be 35.35 M.P.H. So, what does all of this mean to us as we are out sailing? Since our wind angle has moved, and is no longer coming from the side but at an angle to us we need to adjust our sail angle, to keep the air flowing over the sail. This will create yet more lift, because the wind is more powerful to us now, because of it's new velocity of 35 M.P.H. We adjust the sail by pulling on the sheetline. As the sail pulls in you will feel the landyacht accelerate again. By the way, this is where the 'tell tales' come in. Looking forward from the cockpit (where you sit) you can see the tell tale attached to the front forestay. It is there to tell you which direction the apparent wind is coming from. The tell tales on each side of the sail, indicate whether the air is flowing properly over the sail. Ideally, the tell tales will be pointing straight back. If the tell tale on the windward side of the sail is dancing about, you need to pull the sail in with the sheetline. If the telltale on the leeward side of the sail is dancing about, you need to let the sail out some. Pulling in the sheetline also means we have a lot of extra rope in our hands. This excess rope must not be allowed to fall out of the landyacht, or the sheetline will get dirty, damaged, or in the worse case, tangled up with our tire. Please keep this in mind when sailing. Let's take a look at our new sailing condition, after having adjusted for our new apparent wind speed and angle.

We have pulled our sail in, so that the air flows around it properly again. This process goes on, we will now go faster, and the apparent wind will be nearly straight onto our bow as we continue to accelerate. As our speed increases, and the apparent wind moves more forward and less from the side, other things are happening as well. Remember how we said that lift is 90 degrees to the sail? This creates a problem for us. It means that a smaller percentage of the lift is available to move us forward, and a larger percentage is trying to move us sideways. The tire's friction with the ground will prevent us from sliding side ways (usually), but that energy does not just go away. Unfortunately, the lift of the sail, being so far above the ground, creates a tremendous leverage, which will attempt to flip the yacht over, and sometimes, that happens. Do not worry, we will explain how to avoid that, and what you can expect if you fail to avoid it, that will come later. Of course, we do not adjust our sail in big steps like this, we continually adjust it as our speed and apparent wind direction change. This process goes on no matter which direction we are sailing. What we have examined, so far, is the wind coming from our side, this is known as a reach, or the action of reaching. This leads us to our other points of sail.

Points of Sail

This section will not need much explanation, I will allow the illustrations to speak for themselves.

Luffing is not actually a point of sail, it is what happens when the sail points straight at the wind. The sail flutters like a flag, and this is not good for the sail. It happens momentarily as you execute a turn  (coming about) from a close reach with the wind on one side of the yacht, through the eye of the wind, to a close reach with the wind coming from the opposite side. I could be throwing a lot more 'nautical terms' at you here, but I am trying to keep this really basic. In most of these points of sail, the wind is headed, more or less, at the leading edge of the sail. This is keeping within the principle we discussed earlier, of having the air divide around the sail. Running, is an exception to this principle.  Running is sailing with the wind more or less at your back. In this case, the sail is no longer acting like a wing or airfoil, it is acting more or less like a parachute. In this case, the yacht is just being dragged by the wind. This is a very inefficient direction for a landyacht to travel. It is the slowest direction to sail, except for straight upwind (yeah, we cannot do that)! While we are discussing running downwind, there is something else I need to warn you about. Imagine that there is a wind blowing from behind you and to your left a little, and you are sailing in a direction that is a little to the left of straight downwind, and you are not sailing very fast.. If you turn the landyacht to the right so that the wind is coming from straight behind you or from a little bit to the right and behind you, the wind will grab the sail and violently slam it from your right side to your left side. This is very hard on the equipment, and can also cause a loss of control. To prevent this, you pull the sheetline in as you turn, this prevents the boom and sail from moving much. As you complete your turn and the wind is now on your other side, you can let the sail out again, but remember not to let it go out so far that it is rubbing on your side stay. If you perform this same maneuver while travelling at high speed, the problem goes away, because your high apparent wind speed will control the sail for you. We have addressed the points of sail, but not how the points of sail are accomplished. The points of sail are descriptions of  of the landyachts direction of travel, relative to the wind direction. To change you point of sail, you need to steer! Steering a landyacht is almost unique. It is done with your feet. Airplane pilots are familiar with this because the rudder controls in an airplane are foot pedals. Landyacht use foot pedals too, but the operate in reverse from airplanes. In a landyacht, pushing the left pedal forward, will steer you to the right. This might sound backward, but it is intuitive to most people. Another way to think about it is, if your feet twist the pedal to the right (clockwise), your front (steering) wheel will twist to the right as well.

So, we cannot sail up wind. But, I can hear you ask, what if the camp IS upwind from where I am. This calls for a tactic known as tacking. Tacking is merely the action of close reaching with the wind on one side, turning through the wind to a close reach with the wind coming from the opposite side, until you get to where you want to be. It is sailing upwind in a zig-zag fashion.

The last thing I want to cover in this section is how to stop. Stopping is a matter of turning the landyacht into the wind. As I previously stated, landyachts cannot sail upwind. In this direction, not only is there no lift generated by the sail, but the wind will act as a brake, because it is trying to blow us backward. When you steer into the wind, the boom and sail will be straight over your head, keep it yacht pointed in that direction, and the yacht will slow down fairly quickly. After the yacht has slowed down to   a 'trotting speed, you can put your feet on the ground to slow yourself a little faster if need be. Some landyachts are enclosed with full bodies and you cannot put your feet on the ground. This type of landyacht is usually equipped with brakes. Most often, the brakes are on the front wheel only, and is only efective for slowing the yacht down gradually while not under sail power. Brakes that can be used for stopping in an emergency, basicaly do not exist on landyacts. Plan ahead and avoid such emergencies. Remember that I said the sail will luff when pointed into the wind? Well that will happen here as well, and the luffing can be reduced by pulling in the sheetline tightly, in order to reduce potential damage to the sail.

That is enough sailing theory to get you started, there will be a few more points addressed in the safety section.

Safety

The number one safety rule is "Don't hit anything".

That may see patently obvious, but it actually is not. For someone new to landsailing, it is actually somewhat of a challenge, for a number of reasons. Landyachts go pretty fast when conditions are right. One has traveled over 116 M.P.H. in a 30 M.P.H.wind. You may be thinking, they cannot possibly go faster than the wind. Trust me on this, we can! The Spirit Landyacht you will be sailing is not anywhere near that fast, it will barely break 70 M.P.H. in ideal conditions, most likely you will be sailing 35 - 60 M.P.H. While this may not seem that fast, it feels plenty fast, because you are lying on your back only inches off the ground. This illusion of speed, plus the unfamiliarity you have with the craft and the sport, plus the rate at which things are changing, keeps your adrenaline up. Sometimes people panic and forget that they can steer.

Rule number 2: Don't hit that thing, steer around it.

This again seems patently obvious. Again, it is not as easy as it sounds. Landyachts corner well, usually with a lot of control, that is not the problem. The problem is you are sitting in a craft which is very narrow in the front, about as wide as a motorcycle. This is what you see looking forward, a very narrow vehicle. However, inches behind you is your rear axle, wider than a semi-truck.

Rule number 3: Boy, I am REALLY wide!

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O.K., so we have discussed a couple of reasons why it can be difficult to miss things, but we are not done yet. Driving in a car, when something is in your way, you can step on the brake. Landyachts do not have brakes (well, some do, but they don't work)! If you have to know why on earth we do not have brakes, ask me on the dry lake, for now, trust me, there are good reasons.

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Rule number 4 then is: Landyachts steer better than they stop.

Things happen quickly at speed, your visibility is limited to the sides by your helmet, and there are no rear view mirrors. Before turning, look behind you, there may be another landyacht there, or some fool in a car or on a motorcycle, who wants to find out how fast you are going. The wind noise will prevent you from hearing them. So...

Rule number 5: Be aware of your surroundings.

Sometimes a gust of wind will try to flip your yacht over (capsize), they way to avoid this is to be ready for it, and know what to do. There are two things which will put a wheel coming off the ground, back on the ground. One is to let out some of the sheetline, but if you did not have the sail properly adjusted, this can make matters worse, though this is seldom the case. The other method  to avoid capsize, is to steer downwind. To put it another way, steer away from the wheel that is lifting. If you are a water sailor, this may seem backwards, trust me on this, it works. When countering a potential capsize, do not over react. You do not need to jerk the steering, or let go of the sheetline, you want to gently alter your course, or let out some of the sheetline until things are under control again. If your windward wheel is in the air, and you have just taken the corrective actions described, the wheel should be headed back to earth. At this point, it is often a good idea to steer back into the wind somewhat, or pull some of the sheetline back in, in order to slow the wheel's decent. These maneuvers, when properly executed, give the wheel a soft landing, rather than a hard one. A little practice, and you'll get the hang of it. What if you do capsize? If the yacht tips over, the first thing that will touch the ground it the top of the mast. The mast is a heavy wall aluminum tube (on the Spirit landyacht), and it's strength and the strength of the side stays will keep the yacht from tipping further and you will find yourself still in the cockpit, suspended above the ground about 5 feet. I have done this twice. It doesn't happen very often. Last I knew (which was a long time ago), I was one of only two pilots who had capsized a Spirit, and the only one who had done it twice. There were no problems in any of these cases, except that the mast gets bent somewhat. After capsizing, you merely move you feet toward the ground, and release your safety belt, or wait for someone to come assist you. There is also a redundant safety feature on the Spirit in case the mast and stay system should fail in a capsize event. The body of the landyacht is high in the back, so that is can operate as a secondary roll bar. So, with the above in mind:

Rule 6: Know how to prevent capsize. Try to know this well enough that you do not have to think about it when the time comes.

Sometimes the landyacht may slow down, and even require you to get out and push it until there is enough apparent wind to sail with. If this happens, there are two things to know. The first, is always push from behind the yacht. Some people have learned the hard way what it feel like to be run over by a landyacht, because the were running in front of the rear axle. The other thing is be sure to have a good grip on the yacht, and get in before it gets going too fast. A landyacht will sail away very fine, without you. So, for your own safety, the safety of others, and the preservation of equipment:

Rule 7: Know how to push properly.

Those are the main ones, of course, wearing a helmet and seatbelt goes without saying, and make certain that someone familiar with the yacht makes sure it is properly setup. A few more safety pointers on the lake, but I wanted these to percolate in your brain before then.

Rules of the Road

There are a lot of rules for racing, and they apply in play sailing as well. You will not need to know them all (unless you get into racing). Basically, you will probably not be mixing it up with other landyachts much on this trip, but if you do end up sailing with others, a few rules will serve you well. When approaching another landyacht head on, bear to the right, just like on the streets of America. When you are on an intersecting path with another yacht, the yacht on the right has the right of way. Do not count on the other guy obeying this rule, be cautious. When overtaking another yacht from behind, do not sail too close to him/her. They may not be aware of you, and they may turn very suddenly. If you are being overtaken ( remember, you are very aware) and you want to turn, signal the other pilot of your intentions by pointing and moving your hand in the direction you wish go. If that would take you into his path, make sure he acknowledges your intentions, preferably by turning first or moving to the other side of you. Remember to think ahead, and you won't get into difficult situations.

That concludes the Landsailing 101/Ground School Lecture. See you on the dry lake for the lab session.

Although every effort was made to insure accuracy, the author makes no claim to the accuracy of the information above.  Secure instruction from a competent landsailor before trying to sail. In other words, when you get into a landyacht, only you are responsible for you own safety and the safety of others.

Last updated 2/16/09             hits since 3/30/06