dunking your guests

Club boat with our new sail

Taking guests out on the boat tends to bring about a comedy of errors. We like taking people out, but it always seems like 5-6 things go wrong before you're even out on the water.

Saturday one of my brothers and his lady friend came down to visit, and Thomas said he definitely wanted to go sailing again. So, we decided to take Woody across the river to the club and also use the club boat, so we could sail in pairs and get in a good, long (but not too long) sail.

We get to the club and pull the trailer over to the side away from the loading ramp. I figured I'd go grab the club fish, drop it in, and then use its dolly for Woody. But then I noticed something rather important was missing on Woody's hull.

Yep, there was a perfectly round, 5-inch diameter hole in our deck. Apparently I had forgotten to screw the lid back in tight after checking for any leaks last time out. Somewhere on the road, a lonely port lid is getting crushed by tires.

Well, dang. I hoped to still salvage this error by taking the club's Sunfish and one of the Lasers out (since we'd sailed the latter once and Mike really wanted to practice more). So, off I wandered to the boat corral to find one Sunfish, a Laser, a Force 5, and a Butterfly waiting patiently for someone to take them out. However, they were all missing a few important things: their rigging and rudders.

With the others watching me wander around the club like a lost chicken, I tried to find the club manager to ask where the heck all the gear was being stored. The only gear I could find was labeled with club members' names, so I wasn't about to pilfer there. Finally, I gave up and decided we'd take turns on the club fish and use our gear. Luckily, the Sunfish had its rudder tucked inside the cubby and cockpit, so we could substitute everything else.

As we set up, the Sea Scouts and day cruisers were coming in, each one letting us know just how gusty it was. It was coming southwest, though sometimes would shift almost dead west.

"You're going to get wet," Mike told our new crew. We borrowed some extra life jackets from the shed and scooted out into the water. Mike and the lady friend went first.

The big puffs would come and go, but we almost always had a strong breeze. Mike tended to dump wind to keep the boat flat for our guest, but it was an easy hike day. At one point, going into a tack, they very nearly tipped over, but some weight shifts at the last moment settled it down.

Thomas and I, on the other hand, went right for it.

Poor new sail. Each time it's been out, we've dunked it. This time, we were stuck in the mud. On the dock, Mike and the day cruiser instructor watched, and the instructor said "it ain't coming out." The wind and current were pushing against the hull, driving the mast deeper into the mud.

Out on the water, I was trying to tell Thomas how to lift the mast out of the water while trying to get up on the daggerboard, but it clearly wasn't going to work. So, we switched places, since it'd make more sense to have his weight on the board. Pretty soon, up popped the boat (including a triangle of black mud at the top). Now Thomas can brag that he can flip boats over, too.

Our first turtle

This 4th of July was marked with many firsts: our first sail on our neighborhood lake, our first successful dock launch, our first outing with our brand new sail ... and our first turtle.

 

Yep. We flipped the boat right on over. Since we didn't have the camera on us and were a little busy, you'll have to let the Internet illustrate.

Waving for help or having a dance off?

The funny thing about it all, we weren't sailing at high speeds - we were in irons in a wind hole! Yes, we're that awesome. We'd been getting some nice winds, and although we knew we were toodling into a north cove area, the wind was coming from the south and the water was rippling enough ahead we knew we had plenty of room to tack and scoot back out to the main lake.

As we were exploring, we passed some push-pedal kayakers, who took our pictures. After we cleared them, we decided to tack. 

And then the wind died. As we were trying to crank things around and catch any baby puffs to get us out of there, I suddenly became rudder dyslexic. Then a bigger puff came up - we were on the wrong side of the boat, the rudder was cranked wrong, and we rolled right over.

It seemed to happen fast, yet we still had enough time to say, "oh crap, here we go!"

The boat was floating sideways for about two seconds, then rolled right over, daggerboard in the air. By the way, there were probably 30-some people in full view of our sailing prowess. 

Mike climbed up onto the hull to get enough leverage on the daggerboard (we're short), and I swam around to the other side and started lifting up on the mast. We were up in less than two minutes and cackling madly. We climbed back in and realized neither of us had lost our sunglasses. High five! All of our gear was still attached. The only thing missing was a shoe, which I could see floating nearby. So, we sailed right over, scooped it up, and carried on our merry way (laughing, of course).

"I'm so glad we did that," Mike declared as we got back into the groove of long East-West reaches, hiking in 10-15 mph winds (according to the Windfinder report). We haven't tipped on accident; in our first sailing lesson, we did a purposeful capsize and righted the boat from its side, all under supervision and without a full-on turtle. That was three seasons ago. Turns out, it wasn't a big deal. Of course, things can go wrong in any accident, like the boom whacking you hard in the head, getting trapped under the boat, etc. But it's not an "unknown" factor now.

We sailed for awhile longer to let the sail (and ourselves) dry out. The kayakers had caught up to the Stingray family sailing on the west end of the lake and must've told them what happened, because as we passed one another, the dad yelled, "Get a little wet?" 

It was such a lovely sail, all things considered, and we left in high spirits. Which gets to the start and end portion of our sailing: docking (sorry, I went with the climatic moment first).

Once upon a time, we tried to launch from a fishing dock, and there were some issues. Woody remembers it well, so I'm sure he was giving us the hairy eyeball Friday when we rolled him into the water and tied him to the dock (which seems to be lacking in cleats, btw). So, instead of hopping back on the horse, so to speak, we simply stuck to beach launches. Unfortunately, there's nowhere to beach rig our boat on the lake a block from our house, so we had to buck up and get over it. 

When the boat is beached, it doesn't move. You can put the sail up easily. You're also not blocking anyone on the ramp or dock, so you don't feel the pressure and rush and then make lots of mistakes because you're rushing andomgeveryoneswatchingandgettingimpatienteeeek!

Whew.

To get ourselves in order, we read this step-by-step guide to rigging and launching from the dock. YouTube videos hadn't been helpful, because they'd only show coming from the water, or they'd skip leaving the dock or leave out where we thought a helpful tip should be. I'm sure we were just over thinking it all.

Random shot of the lake from the west bridge.  She's over her banks.

We got the boat in and tied off on the leeward side of the dock. Daggerboard in. Check. Rudder on ... Ha. See, when we sold Blue, we swapped rudders, because Woody's seemed to pop out more than we liked, and Blue's seemed to fit more snugly in the bracket. We made sure Woody's rudder fit fine into Blue without slippage, too. Now we're regretting that decision, because Woody's pin doesn't slip in easily, and the rudder still pops out on occasion, making it really difficult to fix things in the water. :-\ Might call the sellers and see if they want to swap rudders and double check that theirs is working properly. Or we jerry rig a way to keep the bottom part of the rudder bracket in place.

The next snag was the halyard. The better one went with Blue, because it was already on her spars and it seemed unnecessary to swap that out. Woody's is grubby and slightly too thick to smoothly go through the mast cap's hole, a problem exacerbated by the frayed ends. After struggling on the dock, we decided to just go ahead and get a new one. 

The wind was coming up, along with the waves, and the ramp was getting busier, so the boat was swinging out, and half the time we were just trying to keep the sail from taking a bath. So, then I was on the dock holding the boat parallel while Mike got things in order, prepared to gently let the boat swing out and go into irons as the sail came up. We thought we had the halyard cleared and the spars situated correctly, but as we started to raise it, the halyard was caught under something. We swapped places, and I double checked the order of spars, got the halyard cleared, and then swore a bit as I tried to re-thread it. Mike finally got it in, and then we raised our pretty new sail (complete with window!), and I cleated off.

Sailing from the dock was smooth as could be, because once we pushed off from the (east-west) dock, we were in a perfect reach across south winds for several yards and then turned north for a run to get out into the wide part of the lake. Coming in was a little tricky, however, because the winds were southeast, so it took some strategic tacking, but we made it in with little fanfare.

Which means ... BEST HOUSE PURCHASE EVER!!! Yes, we don't have our third car garage or the huge yard, but Mike's going to build a garage hoist and mowing is a breeze. We're a mile's drive from the dock, which will make weeknight sailing so much easier than driving all the way across the city to the sail club. We'll still sail there, of course (they have other boats we can play with, too), but this proximity will just encourage us more.

Flooded underpass on west side of lake