Mid-winter musings

Still not a lot going on sailing-wise in our world, but I have been using some of the enforced indoor time from our recent cold and stormy weather in the Pacific Northwest to catch up on some of my blog-following, and came across this account by some Seattle sailors braver than we are, who ventured out last month weather notwithstanding. It sounds like about as much fun as we had assumed...

I can't remember the exact date, so I can't be sure it was the S/V Hello World that I saw, but sometime around this timeframe I was driving out to Shilshole to check up on Insegrevious and happened to catch a glimpse of a sloop just heading out the south breakwater, bucking and slamming into the surf, and thought to myself "Those poor gutsy bastards, it's gonna be a long day for them wherever they are headed."

Of course, the best way to learn is to put yourself in a position where you have to, so I don't think it's inherently crazy to go out this time of year. And from the laundry list offered at the end of the post, it's clear they did learn from it... which is better than I can claim from my experiences in similar situations.

I thought I would comment on a couple of their "lessons learned" though, after several passages through similarly rough Puget Sound/Strait of Juan de Fuca waters which have lead me to slightly different conclusions.

• A time machine is the only accurate weather forecasting tool. Don't rely on the forecast being accurate!

Especially in the Pacific Northwest!

• Get your PFD on before you leave the dock because there's too much business to attend to once the boat is in motion.

Absolutely; if you can see waves outside the breakwater, it's time to suit up. In fact, it's time to do everything you possibly can, even if you have to putter around a little bit and leave late. Those first few minutes outside the breakwater are often the most stressful and difficult of a trip... getting the sail up, the course set, discovering all the little equipment glitches... it's full of distractions as it is, and if you haven't already covered the important safety stuff, you're not likely to do so right then. But it's also exactly when you are up on the foredeck without your sea legs. Prime falling off the boat territory (coming from someone familiar with falling off the boat, sans PFD).

• Being on the foredeck in four to six foot seas sans PFD isn't a great idea.

I'd go one further and say that being forward of the cockpit in those conditions without being clipped on somehow is an even worse idea. I've had enough experience sailing through seas like that to know that it's no picnic handling the boat (and those are relatively mild conditions... it gets worse, even around here). It's better to float than to sink, but floating is just the first step to surviving if you go overboard. Someone has to get the boat back to you, and get you back aboard. No doubt they have considered and practiced that contingency, but probably not in such conditions. Mandy and I tried it once up on the Strait of Georgia with a spare seat cushion, and both of us calm and helping to run the boat. That's one seat cushion we'll never see again, despite a good fifteen to twenty minutes attempting to manuever close enough and slow enough to grab it. And we were cheating and using a boat hook at the end, just trying to snag it as we passed each other on the sides of five-foot waves. Which probably wouldn't have mattered anyway, had it been a person, because we would have crushed his or her skull on the second pass. Add in a little adrenaline and subtract a pair of hands, and the odds of recovery have to go way down.

I'm sure we'll get better, and goodness knows the crew of Hello World are probably better sailors than we are, but I have come to the firm opinion that not going overboard in the first place is the number one goal. A PFD is a nice touch for the Coast Guard when they come to recover the body afterward.

So; in addition to putting one of those on before leaving the dock in such conditions, I'd make sure I had a jackline rigged (we kept it rigged more often than not last summer, though we used it only twice that I recall) and harnesses on the crew (because trying to get a harness on while you are bouncing around is a one-way ticket to Vomitville if you are prone to that sort of thing anyway).

• 25 knots is not enough wind to go under reefed main and staysail on our boat.

True... and in fact, 25 knots isn't really much wind in the grand scheme of things. Everything depends on the individual boat and sailplan, but going to windward in 25 knots would probably see Insegrevious with a working jib out and no reefs in the main (although just on the basis of wave conditions I probably would have tucked a single reef in while raising the main, because you don't want to have to get up there and mess with it later in such slop should the wind increase)

They also mentioned in the post that instead of raising more sail, they fired the engine up to beat north. That seems to be a very common response in such conditions (we've seen people do it frequently both around here and further north) but in my experience it's exactly the wrong thing to do. Sailboats sail... they make for lousy motor boats, or at least those of our vintage seem to. We are almost always more comfortable in "marginal" conditions under sail rather than under power. It's counter-intuitive, and I am not enough of a mariner to explain why, but the boat rides more easily (a relative improvement only, to be sure) and handles better with some sail up... not just some, but enough to give it some power through the water. We smoked a newer, larger boat heading into an anchorage on Texada Island after they dropped sail in very similar conditions and fired the motor up, and we spotted them a handicap of fifteen minutes starting off.

I also have concerns about running the engine in those conditions... crud churned up in the fuel tank, the chance of backflooding the exhaust, spinning the prop out of the water, and the like, all seem like unnecessary risks that could diminish our capability of navigating safely in-shore wherever we did happen to end up. And if you are prone to getting sick (or even if not) the last place you want to be in such conditions is below with your head in the engine compartment trying to figure out why it conked out on you.

I feel bad about the cat, but I think at the end of the day everyone would probably have been happier (and closer to Kingston) with more, rather than less, sail out, no matter how crazy it seems when the wind is howling through the rigging and the waves are slapping you around like an extra in a Clint Eastwood movie. I don't know how well a Caliber 40 points, but Insegrevious goes like gangbusters in those conditions... that would probably have been the fastest trip to Kingston we ever would have had!

• Why didn't we try to heave to in those conditions? [slaps forehead]

This isn't quite the magic bullet it might seem. While it does result in significantly less motion, I wouldn't call it comfortable. Moreover, you're just prolonging your misery when, with a little more water over the bow, you could be making good time toward someplace sheltered and infinitely more comfortable.

• If you're prone to sea sickness, don't play with your iPhone.

Can't comment on that one, since I'm waiting on a sufficiently performant gPhone instead, but I can tell you that it's best to keep your focus on running the boat.

• Christy and I have a veto rule. If one of us is ever uncomfortable in a situation, that person has the right to veto our way out of that situation. Period. We both played the veto card during this trip in different situations and it worked great.

I've read about other sailing couples who work under a similar arrangement and it's always seemed like a good idea to me, but Mandy and I have never been able to get it to work. For one thing, we're both too stubborn. For another, neither of us really trust the other's nautical knowledge sufficiently.

• After the boat is safely in port and everything calms down, we like to talk about what happened. This goes for trips that go smashingly well and trips that don't. This also worked great and is always a good learning tool for us.

We don't do this regularly either, but again, it seems like a good idea.

Anyway, I salute them for getting out on the water and using it as a learning opportunity. I wish we had more time, both to get the boat ready and to actually get out there, but it'll probably be spring before that happens. Even worse, the boat show is coming up at the end of this month, and that'll probably spark our imaginations up and make us even more anxious to get out on the water!