Lee is the side away from the wind – the sheltered side of a boat, an island, a headland or a sail. It is one of the oldest words in the sailor’s vocabulary and it has bred a whole family of terms. In practice you will meet it in three main senses: (1) the lee of something, meaning the shelter downwind of it, as in “we anchored in the lee of the island”; (2) the lee side of the boat, the side away from the wind, opposite the weather side; and (3) as a prefix in lee shore, lee helm, leeway, leeward, lee-bow and by the lee, each of which describes a specific situation involving the downwind direction. The beginner needs the basic meaning: lee is where the wind is going, not where it is coming from. The experienced sailor knows that most of the danger in the word is in “lee shore,” and most of the tactical subtlety is in “lee bow.”
In the Lee: Shelter and Wind Shadow
A landmass, a breakwater or another vessel casts a wind shadow to leeward, and sailors call that shelter the lee. Anchoring in the lee of an island gives flat water and a calm night, provided the wind does not shift. The same wind shadow cast by a sail is a tactical weapon: a boat sitting a few lengths to windward of a competitor puts it in her lee, starving its sails of clean air and slowing it. A wind shadow extends downwind for several mast heights, and in light air it can reach much further. Understanding where the lee of a headland begins and ends also matters for weather planning: the wind bends around high ground, accelerates through gaps, and can be very light, or turbulently strong, in what the chart suggests should be shelter.
Lee Shore: The One to Fear
A lee shore is a shore that lies to leeward of the boat, so that the wind is blowing you onto it. It is the opposite of a weather shore, which lies upwind and gives shelter. A lee shore is the most dangerous place a sailing boat can be when the wind rises, because every failure – a torn sail, a fouled propeller, a dragged anchor – takes you toward the rocks with no room to recover. Seamanlike practice is to keep an offing from a lee shore in any breeze, to anchor only under a weather shore, and if caught, to claw off under the best-pointing sail combination the boat has, well reefed and driven hard. Sailmakers hear about lee shores when a boat needs a proper storm jib and a deep third reef; those are the sails that get a boat off a lee shore, and they should be tried before the day they are needed.
By the Lee and the Lee Bow
Sailing by the lee means running with the wind coming over the same side of the boat as the boom – past dead downwind, so that the mainsail is on the verge of an accidental jibe. Dinghy racers do it deliberately in light air because the flow across the mainsail reverses and the sail can be very efficient; on a keelboat with a heavy boom it is a habit to avoid unless a preventer is rigged. The lee bow is a different idea entirely: it refers to a tide or current running from the leeward bow toward the windward quarter, which pushes the boat up to windward and effectively increases the apparent wind, improving the boat’s course over the ground. Racing navigators plan whole beats around getting the current on the lee bow. The phrase is also used for the manoeuvre of tacking close ahead and to leeward of another boat so that your wind shadow and wake slow her.
Frequently Asked Questions about Lee
Is lee the same as leeward?
Nearly. Lee is the noun and the prefix – the lee of the island, the lee side; leeward is the direction or the adjective – to leeward, the leeward boat. Sailors use them almost interchangeably in speech.
Why is a lee shore dangerous but a weather shore safe?
The wind blows you onto a lee shore and away from a weather shore. Under a weather shore the land also flattens the sea, so it is the natural place to anchor or wait out a blow; a lee shore offers neither shelter nor room for error.
Lee is a small word that maps the whole downwind half of a sailor’s world: where shelter is, where danger is, where the boom will go if you are careless, and where your competitor’s wind will not reach. Learn which way the wind is going as instinctively as which way it is coming from, and the rest of the family falls into place.