Steering
The sailboat is particularly vulnerable to capsizing or hitting a shoal or rock in the water when the steering fails. In heavy chop there is a lot of force on the rudder as it is pushed by the water. If the ship is flying a Spinnaker and it loses steering, the boat will most likely broach (head up into wind), which will, on most boats, cause a capsize in heavy weather. It is possible to sail smaller dinghies without a rudder using only sail adjustment.
Read more about this topic: Sailing Ship Accidents
Famous quotes containing the word steering:
“In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round,—for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,—do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Behind the steering wheel
The boy took out his own forehead.
His girlfriend’s head was a green bag
Of narcissus stems. “OK you win
But meet me anyway at Cohen’s Drug Store
In 22 minutes.””
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The boat is made of dry reeds, and a monkey is steering it.”
—Punjabi proverb, trans. by Gurinder Singh Mann.