The Singing Scoutmaster: Trim Your Sail

Small-Boat Sailing is an interesting merit badge. When you take this merit badge, you learn how to tack. In a sailboat, you can't get upwind by steering straight into the wind. You have to move into it at an angle, with the mainsail close-hauled, and the centerboard down. By putting together a series of tacks, which looks like a big zigzag pattern as you go through the water, you can actually get yourself upwind of your starting point.

Sailors have a saying for this: They'll tell you to "trim your sail so as to gain an advantage, even in an adverse wind." A good sailor knows how to take the very wind that is trying to blow him backward from his intended course, and use it instead to move his boat forward. His forward progress might not be fast with all those tacks, but it's steady.

There'll be times in our life when we'll encounter an "adverse wind." Everything seems to be moving against our intended course. Well, maybe we can't steer straight into the opposing "wind," but by trying a different "tack," we can find a way to move forward. That's one of the secrets of success in Small-Boat Sailing, and it works in real life, too.