Changes course

Usage examples of tacks.

The men stitching and cutting or just lazing, enjoying their 'make and mend', moved themselves out of the way of the men on watch who, in a few moments, would be hauling on tacks and sheets and braces as the great yards swung over.

Yes, he managed to keep his mouth shut, but sometimes it was difficult - like now, when the wind is out of the after sails and Wagstaffe is going to be several seconds late in ordering: 'Raise tacks and sheets!

If only the schooner tacks again to head the Calypso out to sea, and then drops the cable with a buoy on it.

Actually, if it had come to brass tacks, we should have had no objection either to Niobe and her wrestler's frame.

Sheets and tacks were eased, yards braced to spill the wind, and the quartermaster gave quick orders to the men at the wheel to compensate.

The rest of the sails and yards began to drop, swing, cant or flog as the men on deck slashed through sheets and braces, bowlines and tacks, halyards and lifts.

I was cruising rather north of Cape Hatteras, in soundings - fresh gale in the north-north-west and hazy February weather - and I chased a sail standing to the westward with the starboard tacks on board.

And then, as they passed on opposite tacks another voice, Babbington's, 'God bless you, sir.

The Sophie was standing in with her starboard tacks aboard, steering west-north-west.

With a smooth perfection of curve and the familiar, almost unnoticed piping and cries of 'Ready about - helm's a-lee - rise tacks and sheets - mainsail haul,' the Sophie came round, filled and headed back towards the distant packet, still becalmed in a smooth field of violet sea.

The newcomers might be weak on gunnery, but they were thorough-going seamen, and they ran as fast as the Surprises to their appointed sheets, tacks, bowlines, braces and backstays, and the familiar cries followed: 'The helm's a-lee', 'Off tacks and sheets', but the full-voiced 'Mainsail haul' was immediately followed by a shrieking hail from the masthead: 'On deck, there.

Half an hour later the whole force and its prizes, an imposing body of ten sail covering a fine stretch of sea some two miles off Cape Bowhead, was standing south-west on the west-north-west breeze with the larboard tacks aboard, moving just fast enough to have steerage-way.

As Moreta made her first neat tacks along the dorsal, Dilenth and A'dan twitched almost in unison.