OK, let me start this post by apologizing profusely for taking so long to get back around to you. It was not my intention to take this long, and once again I'm sorry for the delay. I hope that my tardiness hasn't driven you away from the rules because, if so I've cut you off from one of the best rule sets out there for this level of engagement.
Now, with my grovelling out of the way, let's take a look at movement. The first thing to do is to see where the wind is blowing from in relation to your ship:
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After that, you then take the wind gauge, turn it so that the arrow is the same as the wind direction, and that tells you what speed (S, M, F) you will be using for this segment:
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Since the wind is coming from the right/starboard side of the ship, we use the side with the green arrows on it. Unfortunately that came out blurry, so here is a closeup of the wind gauge:
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This tells us that we will be using the F movement stick. I decide that I want to turn my ship to the left, Before I can turn though, I have to move the ship's advance in a straight line. This ship has to move 1/2 of its movement before it can turn. For this example, my movement is 6 MF, so I must move 3 in a straight line.:
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The rules say that you should measure movement from the bow of the ship. Since my ships are already based, I have painted those white lines on the base where the bow is. Now, we're ready to turn. I make sure to use the F turn gauge, and put it against the bow of the ship, and move however many points I want around the turn. For this, I'm using all three points I have remaining:
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As long as I keep turning in the same direction next phase, I don't have to move the advance and can just keep turning. Before I move in the next phase though, I have to check the wind position in relation to my ship. This time, I use the side with the red arrows, since the wind is coming from the left/port/larboard side of the ship. This time, however:
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I will be using the medium speed and turn gauges instead of the fast ones. One thing to remember is that if the wind gauge is on the line between two speeds, use the lower of the two.
Now that is the basic movement and turning system. Let's get a little fancy, and look at how to tack, or pass the bow of the ship through the wind. To start out, you have to be sailing as close to the wind as possible, also called "pointing." When your ship is pointing, it will look like this on the movement gauge:
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If you look on the yellow section of the wind gauge, it says "4 MF TACK." That means you must have at least 4 movement points to tack. Let's just say that our example ship is still moving at 6 MF. We move 2 forward, and then pivot the ship so that it is facing directly into the wind:
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Now tacking is a 4 phase maneuver, and what I showed above is the first segment of the maneuver. In the second phase, the ship stays where it is and you roll to see if the attempt to tack is successful. For this, let's assume the ship passed the roll. No need for a picture here. Since you were successful, in the third phase the ship pivots by the stern until you are pointing with the wind on the opposite side of the ship. After you do that, use the wind gauge to make sure that you have pivoted enough:
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In the 4th phase, you start moving again with 2 MF. I didn't take a picture of that because I figured there are already enough pictures of ships next to a movement stick in this post .
So that is the basics of how to move. I haven't even touched on changing sail settings and whatnot, but if you want that can come later. I also promise not to take so long with those, if you need them. Hope this was helpful for you.