Well it’s been an interesting couple days.
Had a 3am call with India on Thursday so worked till noon then took Friday off. Spent Thursday night on the boat. Took the stove. Made a real breakfast. That was the best burnt bacon ever.
The winds Friday were 15kn gusts to 20kn. Invited an experienced world cruiser to help me learn how she sails. As we were going over the boat he looked at the topping lift mess. “That’s a pile of over kill” he said. We moved forward to the mast and he found an in mast line that I didn’t remember being there. I shrugged, loosed the line and the mast dropped about 6”! I have a fully adjustable topping lift. We removed the unneeded blocks and put it back together.
And then it became interesting. You’ll notice there are no photos…
Let me say, this little boat moves. I’m thrilled at how quick she responds to everything. You can feel the hull “jump” we you make an adjustment that powers her up a bit. We were able to make headway in 3kn current tacking nose into 15kn wind. I never expected her to behave that well.
We ran about an hour… full sails. No reefs. We agreed “nothing but tacking until we make sure everything works under load”. Several marina members gave us a “whoop” as we would past their slips. We had a couple radios calls “you did it! She’s off the dock!” That really made me smile.
Eventually I looked at Patrick and said “it’s time to run some gybes”. Three things I avoid when sailing, spinnakers, low winds, gybes. But you MUST know how a boat will handle gybes. We rocketed over to a large open area way outside of the traffic and set up for some pucker factor.
First, that lady hopped right up to speed the second I rolled the wind to 20deg off dead aft starboard. Even without the whisker the jib filled and stayed that way. Patrick and I triple checked everything and talked through our steps. Once we were comfy I called out “gybe port!” Patrick yelled back “gybe port ready”. I took a deep breath and and hollered “gybe ho!”
Everything was perfect! We were on a long line so we talked through the next gybe. We reset, presorted lines and cycled through the gybe. Hot damn! 2 controlled gybes. We couldn’t celebrate long. Short line so we scrambled to reset and sort lines.
“Gybe port!”
“Gybe port ready!”
“Gybe ho!!!”
BOOM!!!
Somehow we missed shorting the main sheet and securing the traveler car. We both saw it happening and watched the standing rigging. Nothing. Moved. She is solid! No sloppy stays. No loose plates. Solid as rodeo bull.
We were on a long run again so we took a couple minutes to go over everything. As we neared the middle flat we opted to take the long way around into a tack so we could head back to the marina. We knew we had a boat that would make short work of the trip. 20 minutes and 373635284937 tacks later we made five feet of ground back to the marina.
W. T. F. ???
We assumed we were running into some shoddy sail trimming or maybe we picked up a crab trap. We couldn’t see anything wrong. At some point we looked up at the sail trim and Patrick says “didn’t you have in mast slides on the main? And when did the jib rip?”
That uncontrolled gybe snapped 12 out of 16 sail slides and blew the seams and luff out of two mid panels. Suddenly the lack of progress made sense. We made a makeshift deeper than deep reef to get the luff tightened and magically we were back on the dock in less than 30min.
The consolation here is that these were expected failures. I knew the jib was thin and had been left in the sun with no UV layer. Those slides were probably original equipment. I set out in high winds, full sail, knowing that I would probably break something.
This morning I headed over to the boat, pulled the sails and started planning for extended dock time. I’m calling the original sailmaker from the Helms factory on Monday to figure out the options for the jib. I assume I’ll be waiting a bit to order as I need some budget recovery. While I'm waiting, the mast will be dropped, lights repairs/replaced, and sheves/blocks serviced. There will be some cleaning and painting as well.
So that’s my story for this weekend. Im not quite as crazy as Barraman, but I’m not far from it.
And just to end on a positive… the scene on my way to meet the Mrs for dinner was positively beautiful!