<<This was a great Tom Cunlife story from Sail Mag a decade ago, he was kind enough to email me the text as I had forgotten where I had seen it. The missing drawing really added a smile to the story, sorry I don’t have that as well. Little wordy for summer emails, but worth the read!>>
Who’s in Charge – You or the Mainsail? (Sail 2 - June 02.doc) Tom Cunliffe encourages a positive attitude to sailing a yacht, but recalls that the sea is always ready to embarrass even the smartest boat-handlers ‘No need to wait for wind and tide, You’re the masters of the sea!’ So sang Ewan McColl about the first steam driftermen as they joyously consigned their sailing smacks to history and put out into the gales of 1903 with a different point of view. The revolution of marine propulsion transformed the mindset of sailors for ever. It isn’t for fun that young deck officers are still sent to sea in square riggers, and the US Coastguard intend far more than a boost for national prestige when they commission the bark Eagle year after year. Nothing teaches the way of a ship on the ocean like a sailing vessel. High up on the yards, the youngsters take in a turbo-charged hit of self-knowledge and team-work while gulping down a lively appreciation of their own mortality. Down on the bridge, the decision-makers are absorbing a feel for the definitive limits beyond which a wind-driven vessel cannot pass. As this becomes instinctive it not only improves general ship-handling, it also generates an acceptance of the sea as a greater power which marks out better sailors, whatever their ultimate branch of the calling. In a modest way, the same can be true of yachting, yet many of us are content not to extend our sailing ability, preferring to settle for the sort of reasonably snappy performance under power which we all can achieve within a few years. Some, however, choose to perform as many maneuvers as possible under canvas simply for their own satisfaction. Most of the time, the different results of these two approaches are unimportant in terms of ultimate safety. Occasionally, the ability to understand a boat fully that only comes with having her stop, start and even go sideways under sail alone, can make a real difference. Learning to handle a boat is a multi-faceted process. I was lucky enough to cut my teeth in an engineless 25ft cruiser as a teenager. I had stored away the essentials of sailing alongside long before mastering the secret of tight turns under power, so that at eighteen I truly imagined myself a sailor. It was only while studying a subject far removed from seafaring at University that I discovered competitive dinghy racing and found how wrong I was. I also became a strong swimmer by default. Youth being the stuff of adventure, we only bothered to launch the boats when the wind was strong enough to make them plane, and my training sessions ended in wipe-out so often that my room was permanently festooned with foul-smelling woollies. It took weeks of floundering in the cold sea before I fathomed the reason for all those capsizes at the windward mark. The answer was simple. I’d been trying to bear away with my mainsail pinned in, just as I always had in the friendly cruisers that had let me get away with such a crime. One day, I noticed that sailors with classier acts than mine released their mainsheets as they upped the helm. I tried it and the effect was magical. Instead of going into a hideous, unbalanced gripe that tipped me and my long-suffering crew into the Sound, the lively little boat came upright and bore away readily onto a thrilling, stable plane. Next, I spotted my unwitting mentors heaving in their mainsheets to luff up from a standing start, and the whole thing suddenly made sense. Instead of going to lectures, I now spent hours in the boats. First, I steered with the sails when the boat was going too slowly for the rudder to work. Next, I cracked the knack of balancing sheet and helm at speed, rather than suffer the results of one fighting the other. The graduation to sterner stuff came later, but my schooling is so deeply embedded that even today I can feel an over-sheeted mainsail from my bunk. Anyone else trained in dinghies would say the same. Not long ago, I examined an experienced yachtsman for a coastal skipper’s ticket. He was safe enough on passage and proved a caring captain who only came unstuck when I asked him to work out of a creek under sail in a stiff breeze. The waterway was dotted with moorings, not all of which had been laid as conveniently as the casual caller might have wished. At the last bend before the sea, a pricey-looking yacht tethered to a large buoy selected exactly the wrong moment to swing across our path. Any attempt to luff up would have stranded us in the reeds, so our skipper correctly opted to bear away. As if in a motorboat, he ignored all the controls but the wheel, which he cranked well over. The effect was absolute zero, except for a rushing sound of turbulent water from aft as the rudder stalled. Realizing his predicament, but having no idea what to do about it, he shoved the wheel hard against the stops. As his knuckles went white, the boat heeled deeply in a dead sort of way, just like my old dinghy used to, but instead of capsizing she kept going straight ahead, crabbing towards a dismal and expensive outcome. Blessing the youthful truancy that had given me confidence, I was waiting until the last minute to act, when an enlightened crew member took the initiative and released the mainsheet for us. The yacht reacted instantly and we surged safely past the insurance claim and away into open water. You might think that expecting sailing skills of this caliber in the context of reliable auxiliary power is out of touch with the realities of modern yachting. In fact, it reflects the rationale of commercial sail training. The incident suggested that in any stressful situation, perhaps with a casualty in the water and a rope round the propeller, our skipper could not have relied on himself to extract the best the boat had to give. His skills were adequate when things were going well. It was only when affairs took a sudden nasty turn that he realized he hadn’t spent enough time honing those basic instincts. Sadly, after all has been said and done, there will always be odd occasions when no amount of training can outwit the final arbiter. The sea remains the most effective leveler on the planet, with a trick or two up her sleeve to be sure you’re on your toes, no matter how good you are — and it isn’t only small yachts that suffer. What the connoisseur of foul-ups looks for when disaster pays a visit, however, is the sort of seamanlike cool I was privileged to witness one summer’s day a few years back. Eating lunch in a waterfront restaurant, I watched a hundred-foot gaff schooner appear around the warehouses and shape up for the dockside under sail. The vessel was well-known locally to have no engine. Her skipper had allowed what seemed more than enough space for contingencies, yet as the schooner luffed off the last of her way, a wicked gust veered the wind through an impossible 90 degrees and filled her mainsail. Nobody deserved a deal like that. Without waiting for an order, the crew began surging away the mainsheet as though their pensions depended on it, but that giant sail kept right on drawing. The schooner was left with no way of stopping. She only brought up as her bowsprit added value to my meal by joining our table through the huge open window. The mate had run up to the end of the spar and, with his passage well and truly over, found himself standing eye-to-eye with an outraged head waiter. For a few seconds he seemed to be counting under his breath, then he placed his order. ‘I’ll take a Coors Lite for myself, six Tequila slammers for the boys and a quart of Wild Turkey for the Old Man.’ In the stunned silence, this young folk hero ignored the sickening twang as a tortured outer forestay carried away the upper rigging, nor did he turn a hair as his tumbling fore topmast demolished a passing harbormaster’s launch, thankfully without injury to life or limb. Later that day, I was drinking coffee with the schooner captain as his crew worked on rigging replacements. ‘You soon learn in this game never to shove a sailing boat into a tight corner without an escape route in case things go wrong,’ the skipper said. I was in unqualified awe of this man, but under the circumstances I had to ask, ‘So what went wrong today?’ ‘At least I steered her in through the window,’ he shrugged. ‘Topmasts are easy to replace. A rookie would have splintered his headgear all over the wall.’ ‘And what about the harbor launch?’ ‘The guy was under power,’ he replied with a straight face. ‘No sense of anticipation. What else can you expect?’ Bill From: CnC-List [mailto:cnc-list-boun...@cnc-list.com] On Behalf Of Joel Aronson via CnC-List Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2014 10:37 AM To: Della Barba, Joe; cnc-list@cnc-list.com Subject: Re: Stus-List Transmission/throttle control - now funny story (long) As a kid I was on a charter boat coming into the main pier in Gallilee RI on a holiday weekend. The skipper shifted into reverse and when nothing happened yelled LOOKOUT. Tore off the bow rail. If it were low tide the cabin or flybridge would have stopped us! Joel On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 10:21 AM, Della Barba, Joe via CnC-List <cnc-list@cnc-list.com> wrote: Coming into Fog Cove, which is a very confined area full of anchored boats, I went to shift into reverse and the shifter was just loose – no connection to the engine anymore. I aimed the boat towards the most open space I could find, gave my wife the helm, and dove into the cockpit locker. I was trying to get the clevis pin back in its place when my foot hit the accumulator tank and knocked the hose off it. The hose whipped around and was shooting water straight up my back while I was doing this. I think I used up my entire store of creative cursing in 30 seconds! Joe Della Barba Coquina C&C 35 MK I
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