d'oh!

Untying the sail, unaware of the troubles that await.

We are road sailors. The running joke right now is that we just take our boats for a drive.

Tuesday we set out with good intentions and good weather. 70s and a light but good enough breeze to give Old Blue a maiden run.

Well.

Every experience as new boat owners reveals just what newbies we are. It is tremendously easier to just be a sailing club member, grab a boat, and sail it out. The club boats are on dollies, so we just wheel them down to the beach and dunk them. All the rigging is assembled.

Tuesday we learned we don't know how the halyard connects to the upper boom, i.e., how the frig to you connect the sail to the mast and raise it? We searched the boom for some sort of connection, then consulted the Internet. Unfortunately, our cell carrier chose that moment to be very slow (as it tends to do when we are in a rush).

So, we fibbed it by tying the halyard to the end of the upper boom. This is wrong. We realized how wrong when, once we had the boat in the water, we raised the sail. Things looked dubious. We commenced arguing over whether or not to sail, even though we could clearly see the sail wasn't sitting right and the mast had a decidedly perturbed look about it. Trust me, masts have expressions.

I, ever the stubborn worry wart, won the argument. Mike went back to get the trailer. We had an audience of fishermen and mothers going for jogs and walks. As embarrassing as this was, I did notice that a sailboat puts a smile on people's faces. So, that's neat.

We loaded the boat backward (stern to car) to see how that might help with weight distribution. Marginally. We've got to extend the tongue and put some more weight up front. Anyway, once we were up on dry land and weren't trying to hold a boat that wanted TO GET OUT THERE, GUYZ!, we tried to raise the sail, to see if we just sucked in the water (we are used to rigging on a beach).

Nope. Sail & mast were looking at us like Al Borland.

Then there was a little snap and a piece of plastic went flying off the mast cap. Dang. Brought the sail down and inspected the damage. Nothing big but enough that it would have been a bad situation on the water. The eyelet through the mast cap now had a sharp edge that could have cut the halyard rubbing against it. Dismasting could injure us and damage the boat.

So, really, we have floated our boats and taken them on bumpy rides all over the place. I think they will have identity issues before long.
 

newbie ahoy!

It's been a few days since our last time on the water, when we briefly "sailed" and then learned a lesson about the limits of novices. We later found out that we launched at precisely the wrong time, when the wind was gusting above 20 mph.

Racers were about to head out from the dock, so I gave them a wide berth when I started off from the beach. Mike yelled "Wait for me!" so I let out the sail. The boat kept traveling, so I purposely put myself into irons, because I didn't want to hear him gripe that I didn't listen to him.

Bad move.

Another dock sat leeward, and right as I tried to get out of irons, a big gust came, caught the sail just right, and we were both sailing backward for the dock. Rudder and mainsheet adjustments didn't seem to have any affect, so at the last second we put our legs out to buffer the collision with the dock. Now we had our sails up against the high rails (water level is several feel lower than normal due to the drought) with full on gusts.

We tried getting the bow pointed around to travel on a reach, even if it was just to the beach to start over/get room to reposition, but if we managed to get around between gusts, we'd just sail backwards again. We had wind, current, and suction from the deep dock. Mike managed to get away but seemed to have problems getting back on track. Our club is situated in a cove-like area prone to holes, though I don't think we had holes that day.

An old man fishing on the dock tried to provide some help when my escape attempt failed, but then he became a complication. I broke free, caught the wind right, and was going to sail past the dock and get into the steadier wind area - and the man had a tight hold on my mainsheet.

"Please let go, thank you!" I yelled.

He just smiled and kept walking alongside me, holding sheet. I repeatedly screamed at him to let go. He couldn't hear and figured he was helping.  When he finally let go, it was right over a dock cleat.

It caught, whipped the bow around, and I lost my momentum and my wind as it shifted again. When I got the sheet freed, he then grabbed the sail ... and in doing so swung the boat around the end of the dock and behind it.

I wanted to cry. Now I was under tree cover, behind a dock, and trying to find footing on a moss-covered, steep boat ramp to try and get the boat turned around. Another club member came to my rescue, as I was paralyzed by trying to figure out how to save the boat without making the situation even worse and damaging it. There wasn't a way to walk the boat all the back to the beach and relaunch, as I was on the steep shoreline broken by docks, fence, and rock.

The other member helped me lower the sail and we swam the boat out (not an easy feat) of the enclosed dock and tried to use another dock further down for some leverage to push out away from the houses and trees. We rigged it up, and she told me to head back to the club and flag down Mike, who had managed to get turned toward the beach.

When I looked back, she was sailing backwards like I had been, but then a much bigger, stronger guy came out onto another dock and gave her a big push. She found the wind right and took off.

Not our best day. Not my best day. Sometimes I feel like the more I sail and the more technical stuff I know, the worse I get. I knew even as I was going into irons that I should have tacked and taken a reach out into the open water. In the first lesson, I was more apt to play and experiment with the boat, and if something was obviously going wrong, I'd play until it went right. Once we started going technical, things just went more awry and I have a harder time getting out of trouble.

On the beach, Mike was in the water struggling with his daggerboard, which wouldn't pop out. I realized then that he the troubled one I had in a previous lesson. The bottom lip of the bracket curled out, so the daggerboard doesn't pop down all the way and rides up while in the water. Mike, apparently, had manned it down earlier, and now it would only come up a few inches before getting stuck.

So. The club newbies had trapped themselves against a dock and then were dismantling a boat in the water, because we couldn't beach it. Awesome. Mike scoured the sheds and garage for tools to help. We tried wiggling the board out, but finally had to quasi-beach the boat on its side, me bracing it (it weighs more than me). But lo and behold, it finally gave, with the bracket barely hanging on. Mike, getting handier since we've married, went into the garage and torqued the bracket straight, screw it back on, and we were good to go.

Since that Sunfish was already down, we packed everything up, washed it down, and put it away, then took my SF out on the water for our first attempt at two-person sailing. It took some scrambling tacks before we figured out a system, and the wind was better for us, but we only got a few minutes of fun in before the sun dropped too low and we had to head in.