The Trade Winds are on one side a pleasure, on the other side a little bit dull.
When you look at the technical part of sailing, it is not really a challenge; Hoist as many sails and sail along the wind. That is why we called today ‘all hands’, to do a maneuver. In this case: to tack.

An explanation for the motorist;
A sail ship cannot sail straight into the wind. A ship can only sail oblique into the wind. We call that: “Close hauled”. Now, it is possible to do that one way, but you can do that also the other way. To change this position, we have to turn the bow straight into the wind and then turn towards the other side. We call this; to tack. 

It is also possible to do this by turning the bow all the way around off the wind, we call this: to wear. For fore-and-aft rigged ships, it is called: to jibe.
To jibe is a maneuver that is risky for fore-and-aft rigged ships. For us square rigged ships, is to wear the easiest and most certain way to change the direction.

To tack, on a square rigged ship has always a higher potential to fail. The bow does not always turn through the wind. This because of the many square meters of sails that we have hoisted. Our sails catch, during the turn, the wind from the opposite direction with the consequence that we sail backwards. This is inevitably, but there are some levels of sailing backwards. Our attempt to tack was so unsatisfactory that we did the maneuver again.

The ship and crew became, due to the Trade Winds, a little bit too much easy-going.

Richard Slootweg
Captain Clipper Stad Amsterdam