Hi I'm Duncan hood welcome to your ASA Sailing Made Easy Tip. We're going to talk about winches. The proper way to load them, ease them, and release them.

Here's how it works. Your sheets, or perhaps your halyard, but your sheet in this case. Comes from forward and ends up at your winch. We always want to wrap our winches clockwise, or to the right as viewed from above. You can always tell which way to turn your winch which way to wrap because you can turn the winch like this and you'll find it jams in one direction when it goes smoothly you wrap that direction.

When you approach the winch you wanna hold your line like this... not like this. Notice the difference in my thumb. You wanna hold like this so that when I let go it'll be free of our hands and we won't lose our fingers. We're going to wrap to the right, as we say rule of the two R's - wrap right.

Around we go, around we go. Now notice as I do this, I'm not doing this - this has a real tendency to catch your fingers in the loop we don't want that to happen. We want to put our hand properly, wrap around and now we're set. Usually two or three wraps is about all you're gonna need. We pull in. Perhaps we put our winch handle on top. And then we'll cleat off to a cleat back here.

This particular boat is very nice because it has a self tailing winch. Safe tailing winches have lifters, and jaws. Your line approaches the lifter and that guides it into the jaws. As you pull it acts as cleat built onto the winch. Which is a really nice feature.

Now my line is cleated down all set on the winch. It's time to ease the line. I undo one. And what I'll do, if I were to just hold it here and ease it. There's a possibility it could fly from my hands, get loose, and we'd have a lot of sheets flying in the wind. However, I can also take my hand and put it on the outside. As I ease with my left, this hand keeps it from running away. Notice again, I don't have anything like this going on. That would be dangerous. And ease, and this hand allows it to slide slightly and you can very carefully adjust how much you pull in or out. So that's your easing of sheets.

Now when it's time to release you may get your command from your skipper "Ready to ease sheets?" or "Ready about?". When you answer "Ready!" you've taken it out of the jaws, or out of your cleat. You're holding it like this again and now you say "Ready!" Now it's time to go. You simply pull up and unwrap and let go. The line flies away from your hands So nothings in trouble, this is free to fly and the jib is free to move to the other side And that's how to wrap, release and ease sheets.