The Zen of Sail

2011-12-28T10:16:00.000-08:00

Wednesday Night Chronicles :The Miracle of Moonpie

Moonpie McMillan was ecstatic. On his way to our table he uncharacteristically sloshed the top half inch of beer out of the pitcher and onto the floor of the Broughton Bay Yacht Club.

“It was amazing!” he blurted as he dropped heavily into the white plastic chair.

“How’s that, Moonpie?” I asked, extending my empty glass toward the pitcher.

“Come on, you saw it! You all saw it!”

That was true. Mongo, Weavil and I had all seen Moonpie’s miraculous come-from-behind victory in PHRF Class H, white sails 240 to 180, just before the three hour time limit had expired.

“Hey, Moonpie,” Weavil blurted, “that’s only half a glass! Fill it up, boy!”

“Great win, Moonpie,” Mongo added, draining the rest of his beer before extending his glass. “You and old Fine Time really smoked ‘em!”

Like Weavil and I, Mongo obviously realized that the opportunity for free beer from the overly tight-fisted Moonpie might never occur again.

“Thanks. It was pretty cool. If I hadn’t decided to play the left side of the course, we never would have seen that little breeze building on the shore.”

Weavil choked down a little lager and opened his mouth to speak, but Mongo was quicker.

“Little breeze?” Mongo said and began to laugh. “That was the storm front they’ve been predicting for two days.”

“Anyway,” I interjected quickly, nodding toward the pitcher of free beer, “Moonpie did have the foresight to place his boat in the right place to take advantage of it.”

“Yeah,” Mongo continued, not noticing my frantic eyebrow movements. “Dead last finally worked for you, Moonpie!”

“I wasn’t dead last!” Moonpie objected. “Everpure and Chez Boat were behind me on the other side of the course!”

“You were last, man. We even commented on it while we were folding the sails, didn’t we

Jack?”

I tried vainly to salvage a positive attitude. “I believe what we said was, ‘Moonpie sure looks like he is last, but the race isn’t over until we see what he has up his sleeve.’”

In fact, of course, we had been joking about the hapless Moonpie and his permanent spot at the back of the fleet, an appropriate placement considering the boat’s scuzzy bottom, blown out sails and noticeably crooked mast.

Weavil must have noticed that Moonpie’s ample round face and shaved head were slowly turning pink.

“Jack’s right, Mongo. Moonpie was just laying back waiting to see where the wind was going to fill in before he made his move.”

“Right,” I added, “ and the proof is in the speed with which his agile crew had that whisker pole on the genoa to take advantage of the change in wind direction.”

“Where is Rita, anyway?” Weavil asked. “She should be celebrating the big win with you.”

“Rita decided to go home early,” Moonpie said. “She…uh…had to get dinner started.”

“And dry off,” Mongo added.

I wasn’t all that surprised that Moonpie’s wife was absent. As the storm front had descended on them - a greenish-black line of rolling clouds accompanied by churning, three foot waves whose tops the near gale force wind had blown into a blinding spume - we could hear her shrilly screaming at Moonpie. He had sent her up onto the foredeck, from whence she hollered back for him to release the genoa halyard so she could pull down the sail. He yelled back at her to set the whisker pole. After several expletives, Rita gave in to Moonpie’s wishes and set the pole, just as the full force of the cold front struck. It was a good thing, because the pole gave her something to hang on to. It was also a bad thing because her brother Stewart, their other crew member and a rather slow learner, had apparently placed too few wraps on the genoa sheet winch. When the genoa snapped full, six feet of sheet slipped through his hands and the clew shot forward and rose ten feet off the deck. Rita, who had been at the port rail just in front of the mast as she set the pole, was yanked off her feet and ended up hanging over open water. We had already finished and, sails furled and motor on, were watching in horror and awe as Moonpie’s Catalina 27 began to surf toward the committee boat, Rita dangling beneath the poled out genoa. We were all even more horrified as the mast began to rock back and forth in wider and wider arcs.

Weavil’s eyes had grown wide, his voice almost a whisper.

“Death Roll,” he muttered.

As the bow yawed from side to side and the mast rolled one way then the other, dipping lower and lower with each cycle, Rita was forced to pull her legs up in order to keep from being dunked.

Mongo had found that particularly entertaining.

“She’s got some abs,” he observed.

It wasn’t until the boom accidentally jibed and the boat rounded up into the wind, however, that Rita, as well as the whisker pole and the spreaders, actually went into water. With the boat on its side, we could see why it had been out of control: Moonpie had traded places with Stewart and was on the low side winch, ostensibly trying to grind Rita back on deck. He had left Stewart, who had never before touched the tiller, at the helm. Indeed at the moment he still wasn’t touching it, but had let it go in order to scramble up onto the high side. In a way it was lucky for Rita that Moonpie had switched places because, as she slid along the hull, neck deep in brine and sputtering, he had the strength to grab her arm and haul her back into the boat. From the tenor of her screams, she did not consider herself a lucky person, however, and once on board disappeared down the companionway. Back at the helm, Moonpie had managed somehow to regain control and resume a downwind course. He and Stewart even survived a second shattering gybe that should have removed the mast from the boat and Stewart’s head from his shoulders, had he not bent over to pick up his soggy pack of Craven A’s.

This had all happened extremely quickly, of course, and in the excitement Mongo, Weavil and I had forgotten that there was still a race going on in Class H. At the first sign of the approaching storm front, the four other boats in the class had all dropped their genoas and prepared themselves to complete the course under main alone. As a result, Moonpie, with flapping foresail and a considerable head start, had already passed Chez Nous and Everpure, though even with main alone they were now almost matching his speed. That left Partee Girl and Beowulf, who, when this had all begun, were a good forty boat lengths ahead and within a hundred yards of the finish. The wind line, however, had still not reached them, and so they sat bobbing under main alone, waiting for the blast.

The committee boat in their haste to shorten course and expecting a drifting finish, had set a rather short finish line, only fifty or sixty feet long. The inadequacy of that length became apparent as the first puffs of the front caught Partee Girl and Beowulf and they began to accelerate toward the very heavily favoured pin end on port tack. It became glaringly obvious when from the cockpit of Moonpie’s wildly careening Catalina came the commanding shreik: “Starboard!” Sure enough, blasting in from the pin end of the line on a starboard broad reach Moonpie was demanding his rights. Partee Girl and Beowulf gybed clumsily onto starboard but were forced to sail almost by the lee in order to lay the line and not hit the committee boat. Moonpie meanwhile was having the opposite problem, trying to bear off enough to actually cross the line rather than parallel it. If Stewart had been able to release the genoa, of course, the problem would have been solved, but he had neglected to put enough wraps on the winch again and he could not grind enough slack into the sheet to release it from the cleat in which it was jammed. Moonpie had the tiller practically at right angles to the centreline, but with so little rudder in the water, it made no difference. The boat passed the pin heading straight along the line for the committee boat.

“Gonna be nasty,” muttered Weavil.

“Too cool,” whispered Mongo. “They’re gonna jump.”

Indeed, the three committee members were now all standing in the eighteen foot Boston Whaler, looking anxiously at the approaching boats. Partee Girl and Beowulf were now up to speed, healing and approaching the moment when they would have to decide to harden up, abort their finish and leave the committee boat to port, or tough it out, run across the line by the lee and hope that Moonpie didn’t T-bone one of them.

“No luffing rights!” came a brave cry from the cockpit of Partee Girl. “Bear off, you nitwit!”

“Can’t! “ came the laboured and surprisingly high pitched squeal from Moonpie.

Just then Stewart managed to pry the genoa sheet out of the cleat with his winch handle, the genoa flapped free and the Catalina bore off across the finish line, gybed onto port and weaved clear of the other boats. Partee Girl and Beowulf crossed in second and third place and the committee members all sat back down.

“Yeah,” Moonpie said after a slight pause, “Rita did have to dry off a little. You know,” he continued, ”I’m thinking of naming the boat after her.”

I looked at him. Obviously, on the way back to the club there had been a serious discussion between the two of them.

“Probably a good idea.”

Weavil and Mongo nodded.

“How about Fine Rita?” Moonpie offered.

I looked at Mongo and Weavil.

“Very cost effective,” I said. “You would only have to change half the name. How about another pitcher and we’ll work on it?”

Wednesday Night Chronicles: A Near Perfect Crew

Mongo and Weavil are near perfect crew. They have great focus, know their jobs, follow orders instantly and never offer unwanted advice to the skipper. In addition, they share all boat expenses and don’t expect me to buy more than two pitchers of beer after a race.

Mongo came by his name honestly. Not only does he look like the original Mongo in “Blazing Saddles,” but he possesses the same prodigious strength. In a single race he managed to both snap off the gooseneck with an overly enthusiastic tug on the boom vang, and winch the clew right out of our new North 150. That is why Weavil is so valuable. With each of the above mishaps he flew into action, scampering about locating spare parts and tools, effecting repairs, changing sails, all with the speed and agility of a small, hyperactive ape. His efforts limited our losses to a mere seven boat lengths.

Weavil’s real name is Neville, but a combination of small, shifty eyes and his diminutive stature earned him his nickname while he was still in high school. Truthfully, he doesn’t appear particularly intelligent, even though he is a doctor: a fully accredited, licensed and degreed neurosurgeon in fact. He prefers restoring antique cars to practicing medicine, however, and enjoys driving around town in a green, restored 1932 Ford pick-up on the doors of which is elaborately painted in gold letters:

Neville Turnbill

Brain Surgery and Light Hauling.

All of which brings me to the Wednesday night that they saved my life. We were broad reaching into the leeward mark under spinnaker in twenty knots of wind. Our Santana 525 was on starboard tack with Nigel Whidley-Smythe’s Thunderbird, Pegasus, clear ahead by a boat length and Lester Dyck’s Catalina 27, Biggus Dyckus, about even with us on port tack and closing fast. Having Lester this close at a mark rounding made even Weavil a little nervous. Lester’s judgement concerning boat tactics in close quarters was frighteningly bad. Over the three years that he had been racing, scarcely a boat in the fleet had escaped without some damage to gel coat, fiberglass, toe rail or all three. Part of his problem was his appalling ignorance of the race rules, coupled with an even more staggering ignorance of his own ignorance. He would shout for “room” at marks, obstructions, and even in open water if he felt another boat was too close. He loved to loudly quote specific rules at his frequent protest hearings, but never quoted them quite accurately. In fact, even the most basic concepts seemed to elude him. Luffing, overlap, burdened yacht, obstruction : these to Lester were flexible terms open to whimsical, arcane, even figurative interpretation. On the water, Lester screamed, bullied, and roared, and on shore, he ignored, rejected, or maligned any attempt to educate or criticize him. Few were fond of Lester.

“He’s going to try to gybe between us and the mark,” Weavil muttered from his position at the starboard shrouds where he was flying the chute.

“We have to give the idiot room,” I said.

“You sure he’s not behind?” Mongo asked.

I double checked.

“He’s actually gaining; he’s on more of a reach than we are. He’ll be even with Nigel.”

“Let me luff the chute,” Weavil said, suddenly enthusiastic. “We’ll slow down, let Lester go ahead and take out Nigel and we’ll slip in between them both and the mark!”

“Yeah,” Mongo added. “You know he’s going to take Nigel way wide.”

True. No matter how much room you gave Lester, he always wanted more.

As if on cue, from the cockpit of Biggus Dyckus came a belligerent bellow.

“Room! ROOOOOOM!”

Nigel bore off a degree or two, preparing to allow a good boat length for Lester at the mark which was now about six boat lengths away.

“Luff it,” I said.

I bore off slightly to slow down and set up the turn while Weavil eased the spinnaker sheet to collapse about half of the chute. It flapped for a few seconds allowing Pegasus to gain another half boat length.

“He’ll be clear ahead, now, Jack,” Mongo opined. “Nice move.”

“Good thinking, Weavil,” I added. “Sheet in. Then get ready to dump the chute and harden up.”

“ROOOM!” came the bellow again, followed by, “TAKE IT UP!”

I was already thinking about the gloating I would be doing in the clubhouse after the race when Lester’s last holler caused me to do a double take. Instead of maintaining his course for the mark and Pegasus’s nicely polished topsides, Biggus Dyckus had hardened up and was heading toward us.

“LUFFING RIGHTS!” Lester yelled. “UP! UP! UP!”

Normally Mongo prefers silent menace to loud theatrics, but suddenly he was on his feet waving both huge arms in Lester’s direction and roaring: “WE’RE ON STARBOARD, YOU’RE ON PORT, YOU MORON! YOU CAN’T LUFF US UP!”

Lester may have been somewhat cowed by the fierceness of Mongo’s reply, but he continued to parrot his interpretation of the rules anyway.

“ROOM, ROOM AT THE MARK! WE HAVE AN OVERLAP,” came the reply. “UP, UP, UP!”

“Weavil…”

I had started to say that, right or wrong, we were going to have to gybe to avoid a collision, but he was already reaching back to hand me the spinnaker sheet. Mongo handed me the guy, then pulled down the port twinger, pulled in some of the main sheet, and got ready to gybe the genoa as Weavil jumped onto the foredeck to gybe the pole. The tiller between my legs, I began to rotate the boat to port under the chute.

Twenty knots of breeze in a twenty-five foot boat is ideal. Anyone can sail in twelve. At twenty, in close quarters, you have to do things right.

“UUUPPPP!”

The wind was now almost on Lester’s beam as he continued to alter course toward us, now just two boat lengths way.

“ROOOM! UPPPPP!” and then “KEEP CLEAR! KEEP CLEAR!”

“Better not miss the gybe, Weavil,” I said. “Go!”

We swung through the wind nicely. Mongo eased the downhaul and Weavil removed the pole from the mast ring, tripped the sheet, then pushed the pole across to port. He was about to clip onto the new sheet when Lester’s voice, filled now with something akin to terror, rang out anew.

“RELEASE! RELEASE! OH, NOoooooo…!”

I made the fatal mistake of looking away from Weavil. Biggus Dyckus was rounding up hard, out of control, heading for a full scale broach and our starboard gunwale. I must have twitched the tiller a little, altering the speed of the turn, because Weavil missed the gybe, the spinnaker bobbled and the boom came crashing across a lot more quickly than anticipated. Occupied as I was with Biggus Dyckus, I ducked a little too slowly. The end of the boom should have caught me in the temple, but Mongo somehow anticipated the disaster and raised one massive forearm to deflect the boom up high enough so that it bounced off the top of my head. I can still remember thinking that perhaps I should sit down now and have a nice cup of tea. Then I was very cold and wet. Too cold and wet to have wet my pants, I thought, so I must be having cold sweats from a fever which would explain my horrible cough and congestion.

Filmore Madison, Lester’s genoa trimmer told me later that Weavil released the spinnaker halyard on his way aft, held onto the guy with one hand and dived into the water with such velocity that he actually landed further astern than I was. Mongo took us into the wind and held onto the spinnaker sheet so that he could pull the whole works back into the boat, me , Weavil, the spinnaker, everything, all with one arm, the other having been broken by the boom.

When we got back to the Broughton Bay Yacht Club, Weavil looked us both over and gave us his official medical clearance for an hour’s worth of post race beer drinking during which Mongo regaled us with tales of his many previous football injuries: fractures, tears and dislocations which unlike his present break “really hurt.” Lester tried to launch a protest against us for being “in his water,” but the Race Committee informed him that if he attempted to do that, the Committee would bring an action against him under the Fair Sailing Rule which they guaranteed he would lose. He sulked away. Finally Weavil took us to the emergency ward and obtained appropriate brain scans and x-rays and fitted Mongo with a flimsy looking fiberglass cast that Mongo vowed he would be out of in ten days. Then they dropped me off at home, told me to rest and went back to clean up the boat.

It turned out that Biggus Dyckus, dead in the water after her broach, had been dragged down wind on her beam ends by the spinnaker, which had been released but filled thirty feet away because Lester had tied knots in the ends of all the spinnaker lines. We therefore escaped without a scratch: the spinnaker was intact, no fittings were broken, I didn’t even lose a winch handle. Not only that, but having to throw the race out didn’t affect our standing in the series. And Weavil bought the beer.

Like I said, a near perfect crew.

GOOD TIMES ON BIG BOATS: Tips For The Small Boat Sailor

2011-12-19T09:18:00.000-08:00

The majority of sailors sail small boats, either small keelboats or dinghies, yet they often dream of sailing in beautiful, far-off places in big boats: forty-five to fifty foot bareboat charters. This is understandable. Dividing the expense of a bareboat charter between three or even four couples can make sailing in far off places affordable. And while it is possible to squeeze those same three couples into a thirty-two foot fiberglass hull, most people find a forty-five or fifty foot boat a little more congenial. Still, there are significant differences between sailing small boats and handling large ones which the charter companies are rightly aware of, and which potential charterers should be as well.

Fortunately, good small boat sailors already possess all of the most important skills required to handle large sailboats: they understand and are aware of the action of the wind on sails and the hull, they are sensitive to changes in boat speed, they know and understand all of the sail and rigging controls and how they affect speed and handling, they have had experience in dealing with all kinds of weather conditions, and therefore they anticipate change and the unexpected. All of that knowledge and skill is directly applicable to the handling of large boats. The only thing that is needed is the ability to anticipate the problelms that the much greater size and mass of a large charter boat pose for the small boat sailor and his crew.

Under Sail

In the Caribbean, the winds can blow at twenty-five to thirty-five knots for hours or days at a time. The loads on sails, lines and fittings is extremely high in these conditions. On small boats, the accidental luffing of a headsail or release of a line can be an annoyance or an embarrassement. On a large boat, the same incident can be extremely dangerous. The flapping clew of a 140% genoa in twenty-five knots of wind on a fifty foot boat can easily knock a person unconscious and overboard. In the same way, sheets which are not secured on their cleats can do great damage by releasing unexpectedly and dragging the fingers or even the hair of the unwary into winches, or removing large patches of skin from a casual crewmember’s hands.

In strong winds, even the roller furling of a jib cannot be taken for granted. If you go head to wind, the force required to winch in the furling line on a large masthead genoa may either break a well used line or winch the sail so tightly on the forestay that you come to the end of the line before the sail is completely furled. There is nothing worse than having eight feet of flapping genoa sticking out from the roller furler. On a small boat it would be possible to reach up and wrap a bungee cord or line around the loose sail. On a big boat, the flapping clew is fifteen feet off the deck and thrashing around with two, big one inch or inch and a half lines through it, held in place by bowlines the size of a fist. If it is left to flap, the corner will eventually be torn out of the sail. In those conditions, the only thing to do is deploy the genoa again and refurl it, this time downwind, buried behind the main. In a big boat, moving at nine to eleven knots, this all requires a certain amount of sailing room and preparation.

In large boats, you must plan your exits and entrances to moorages well in advance. Lower your sails early, and don’t get cocky. Last year, at a popular snorkeling spot in the BVI, a professional charter captain ran over my dinghy when, instead of motoring off his mooring ball next to me, he tried to sail off. He misjudged the direction and strength (25 knots plus) of the wind. When he popped the roller furled genoa on his forty-eight foot boat, he instantly discovered that he was overpowered on a close reach heading straight for my shrouds. As any experienced sailor knows, it can be really difficult to bear off in those conditions as long as the sails are full. Since he had only elderly charterers on board, no one responded to his direction to ease the sails. He did manage to bear off astern of my boat, but couldn’t avoid the dinghy which he struck amidships. How it managed to pop out from under his forefoot with the motor intact remains one of life’s mysteries.

Make sure that all halyards and sheets are securely cleated, but don’t overwrap the cleats. In case you want to change a setting in a hurry, you don’t want to have to undo four figure eight wraps. Make sure everyone on board knows how to put a line on a cleat and that they all do it the same way.

In addition to the usual warnings about staying clear of lines under load, be careful of footing. On a large boat, the platform on which one works is more stable than on a small boat, but the distances between handholds is greater and one tends to reach more for things. Occasionally one finds that one has to stretch and reach for things overhead, to pull down the headboard of the main, for example, or shake loose a halyard one suspects is fouled. Make sure that you know what you will be standing on before you make the big stretch to reach the line or fitting, otherwise when you go to tie up the aft portion of the main on the boom you may discover that the fall down the companionway on a big boat is a lot further than on your J 24.

Next: TIPS UNDER POWER