OUT OF THE BATHTUB! (Part 2)

     Or, you can really learn a lot in one eventful day.

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may 17, 2013

     "Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time."-

Joseph Conrad

Fairly rapidly, a number of things went wrong. Silver Girl would sail up the waves fairly well, ride the crest, plunge down to the bottom, and in the troughs, get seriously overpowered. With too much wind in the sails, she would try to turn sideways and round up. She was trying to broach, something not covered in our 4-week sailing class. We were managing to keep her somewhat under control, and Tom was having fun, but Tom wasn’t responsible for the boat’s safety, and he didn’t pay the insurance. He also hadn’t read Sailing for Dummies, but I had, and I recognized that we were in more trouble than he realized. For instance, I knew that an 8’ wide boat should not be taking 5’ waves abeam. As I found out, Tom also had not studied a chart of the area. Fortunately I had, so I knew we were slowly moving closer to shore at a very shallow area that had a crashing surf.

In an attempt to get Silver Girl more under control, I tried to reduce our sails. Unfortunately I had been previously convinced that the “reefing system” on this boat was adequate. It turns out that by  “adequate” my advisor was endorsing a system that consisted of two loose pieces of line stored in the cockpit. The idea was that you lowered the sail, passed the line through the reefing cringle, and tied it under the boom. This would have to be done manually, at both ends, while standing where the boom could hit you. The person who assured me that this system was adequate also recommended reefing at the dock, but we hadn’t done that. Because of the tack we were on, a slight wind shift could have caused the boom to swing into the person doing the reefing, and the wind was very unpredictable between the big waves. Tom and I both concluded that it wasn’t safe to use this so-called “reefing system.”

Meanwhile, Tom and I disagreed about the seriousness of the situation, and so the first (and second) time I asked him to spill the sails at the bottom of the waves to depower the sail … he declined. That’s right. He said “No.”

In fairness to Tom, I brought this on myself, as you’ll see at the end. We had a couple of discussions about this as we rolled and tossed about. Meanwhile, as the boat swung wildly around, first the gas can broke loose and bounced across the cavity under the cockpit, and then we heard other noises of something else flying free. The same person had installed both items the day before, and in my excitement over getting the boat ready for a two-day sail, I hadn’t checked his work. Apparently he thought that setting the gas tank on a shelf with rubber-gripping shelf paper, without straps, was enough to hold it in place, while putting one bungee across the head opening was, to him, enough to restrain something else just as heavy.

Neither worked. Tom and I saw the fuel hose pull out of the outboard and heard the thump, and looked into the space under the cockpit. The gas tank wasn’t leaking, but we both felt that whoever tried to retrieve it might easily suffer either a concussion or a broken arm because of the way the boat was bouncing around. So we had no engine. We heard yet another thump toward the bow, but we had our hands full in the cockpit and neither of us could go below to check.

Having finally convinced Tom that the boat was overpowered, and realizing that reefing wasn’t a good plan, we decided to reduce the windage by bringing the headsail down. Silver girl had a downhaul, and we tried dropping the headsail from the cockpit. Unfortunately the leech line was loose, and it got tangled on a stanchion. The headsail was now stuck half up and down, misshapen and uncontrollable. So I stuck a bungee cord in my pocket, crawled to the bow, cut the leech line with a knife, pulled the sail down, and secured it to stanchions with the bungee. That actually helped a little. That was good; we needed the help! It was very scary on that skinny little bow bouncing around while I tried to wrestle the headsail into compliance, and I was relieved to get back to the cockpit. But not for long.

“Feel the tiller,” Tom said to me. “It doesn’t feel right to me.” I felt it, and it didn’t feel right to me either. It felt … loose. We didn’t know if it was the tiller or the rudder, but neither could be good, and we were still being pushed toward the shore. Again, Sailing for Dummies had taught me well, and I knew to stay away from the shore. Again, there was another disagreement and discussion, but it was my boat, and I turned her toward Yucatan.

Meanwhile, another club boat was sailing closer and closer to us. They wanted to try to put one of their crew on my boat in this five-foot rolling sea. The man was already climbing over the stern rail of the boat he was on. At that point I drew a line in the sand, and said “No. It’s not safe. I’m steering her to deeper water, and we’re calling Boat US.” I think the man who had volunteered for this was a little offended, but it just wasn’t a good idea. Tom did not like the idea of our sailing away from shore, but I knew we had to get away from the shallows. I also knew we could handle the waves better. I steered the boat until she was angling into the waves as well as away from shore. She rode much better this way than taking those big waves on the stern, and cut through the waves reasonably well.

However, I made several mistakes, one of them a very big one that led to all the others. Can you guess what it was? Check in tomorrow for the finale!

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