Maybe it was an Omen
… that I put the link in about the learn to sail in gusts link. That’s just what happened yesterday.
The weather was perfect for sailing! Breeze was nice. It was a little on the cool side, but not enough to be uncomfortable. We’d been out a couple of hours and were just about to turn back to the docks when BAM! A gust came and knocked us over about 35 degrees. Not much, if you’re a racer, I know – I’ve been at bigger tilts when racing. But this came out of nowhere! Everything inside the boat that wasn’t locked down went from port to starboard. The boat spun til it was facing a windward direction, then stayed pretty stationary. It was still rocking in the wind, but not quite that bad.
I first tried to pull down the mainsail. I got it partway down and it stuck. I couldn’t at the time figure out what was wrong. Debbie, my one passenger, I told to try to bring the jib in. It’s on a roller furler, so I showed her how to haul it in. But the wind was too strong and she couldn’t do it.
I finally got the mainsail reefed in (still couldn’t get it all the way down), and started the motor. I turned the boat slightly off the headwind, since directly in took us into a crabpot minefield. Debbie took over at the helm. I pulled in the jib, then took over the helm and headed back into port.
We were on a broad reach heading back in. With the main reefed, and the engine on minimal, we were still doing about 6.5 knots. The waves were coming in parallel to us, and growing.
Yeah, the waves. There were ripples on the water most of the time we were out. There were still ripples when this storm hit us. By the time we neared Wormley Creek (home), the waves were about 2 foot high.
Wormley Creek is sheltered. In fact, you really can’t tell what the weather will be like on the York River sitting there at the docks. In this case, it was a good thing. I knew, when I brought the boat in, I could take care of whatever I couldn’t in that weather.
When we got in, I saw that the main halyard had wrapped itself around the spreader. That’s why I couldn’t take it down. First lesson – follow the entire line when trying to figure out why it won’t move. That’s no saying that I could have gotten it unwrapped out there. That would have required holding the line tighter as I tried to bring down the sail. But at least I would have known why it wasn’t moving.
Second lesson? Well, I’m going to hope some more knowledgeable sailors can tell me how I could have predicted this, or was it a fluke?
Weather report – land: 5 – 10 mph winds; marine: 10 – 15 knots, with gusts of 20 late in the afternoon in the bay. Sky: partly cloudy when we headed out. Overcast most of the sail. But the sky was a light, even color, almost as if we were staring up at fog. No dark spots – no dark spots ever. That I would have known was a storm heading our way. And, as I mentioned, the waves didn’t pick up until after the winds had started getting strong.
The online buoy report doesn’t work for that part of the river. The only report I can get is from the buoy closer to the mouth of the bay. The weather report I get for that portion of the bay tends to be less favorable than I find conditions on the river, although I won’t venture out if the words small craft advisory appear.
And the whole time, I kept repeating my mantra: sailboats are stable, sailboats are stable. I have 4 tons under me and it will take alot to tip it over.
Wasting Money
The lower Chesapeake Bay is a great place to have a boat; you can sail almost all year long. But the weekend weather hasn’t cooperated the past few weekends. It’s been rainy or too windy to feel ‘safe’. But there are other things to write about, such as money spent before research was done on purchases for the boat. And that’s not smart, since unwise purchases can be expensive.
I don’t have alot of upper body strength. That being said, when the mainsail came with no winch, I put that on the list of things to purchase. And I did, for about $125 at the local used boating supplies store. Well, with all the other stuff I got done and spent money on in the winter and fall, the winch never did get installed. Now, at the end of the summer, I have developed a bit of upper body strength and have no problems hoisting the main myself. So, get rid of the winch, right? Well, I can get about 1/4 that for it on eBay. Ah well!
The compass onboard when I purchased the boat had no liquid in it. Filling it would cost about $150, for which I could buy a new one. So I did, using the dimensions the marine mechanic gave me. Afterwards, I found out that the previous (or a previous) owner had created a tube to stick on top of the pedestal to hold the compass. But there was no way to attach the compass; the old one had just been dropped into the tube. I’d already thrown out the receipt by the time I’d figured this out. So I did sell this one on eBay (at a loss, of course) and bought one with housing.
So now I’m trying to figure out how to get the new compass installed. Problem with this one? The bolts holding the wooden plate in place at the top of the steering column are just inside where the holes for the much smaller screw holes are in the compass housing. Well, I think I can get it in by cutting holes in the housing in order to get the bolts in place. But hopefully, this, too, wasn’t a waste of money.
The rubber/plastic(?) gasket on the top of my Anderson winches had cracked. One of my crew thought it a good idea to remove it for me. It was cracked, after all, right? Nope. That rubber was allowing the mechanism to turn correctly. So I put the broken pieces back in and purchased a maintenance kit for the winch. The picture online looked like it had what I needed. Wrong. It didn’t. So I called the supplier. What I was needing was a spring. Why it’s called a spring when it doesn’t look like a slinky, I don’t know. But that’s what it’s called. So I bought two, one for each winch, to the tune of $40 apiece! Ouch! For a piece of molded plastic! Luckily, this did do the trick!
Lesson learned. Figure out if you really need it. And, if so, do some careful research to make sure what you buy is what you need!
[Top]Miscommunication
So I get a call from Petra a few weeks ago, and just for the heck of it, I ask her if she wants to help me move my boat to a marina nearer to work. Erik’s going to be out of town this week, and I’d been wanting to to do the ‘camping near work’ – bit with it for awhile now. Living a 30 minute drive away isn’t as much a killer as some of the drives I’d made to work in the past. But it’s nice to be able to listen to the traffic report and laugh because you don’t have to worry about all the problems they’re reporting.
Anyway, she said she’d love to, and to give her a call back the weekend before so we can arrange for transportation. She asks where we’re moving it to, and I tell her it’s a marina about 5 miles from work.
I called her on Sunday and told her I had a ride home from work so I could leave my car at the marina. That way, I could give her a ride back to hers at the other end.
This morning arrives and I find that I have both her and Dave along. Hooray! I would have loved having a day with Petra alone. But Dave is one of the three people who taught me most of what I know about sailing, so it’s always a pleasure to have him around.
So we start preparing the boat to take off and Petra asks where, specifically, we’re going. I show her on the charts and she’s a bit taken aback. She thought, when I said ‘about 5 miles’ that I meant we were taking the boat to a place 5 miles from where it was now. Nope. It’s actually about 40 miles away. Well, she laughed. Luckily, she’s retired and Dave is semi-retired, so taking the whole day to do this wasn’t a big problem.
I had checked the weather report the night before. Partly cloudy with scattered showers. Winds 10 – 15 mph. I didn’t check it that morning, but I looked at it again on my Blackberry. Same report.
Well, the sky was overcast that morning as we left. But usually a weather report like that means it will burn off by noon or so. But it wasn’t to happen today.
We took off around 9 a.m. There wasn’t any wind to speak of going down the York River. It picked up some by the time we reached the bay. But we were going straight downwind, and didn’t want to veer and add to the mileage. So no sails yet. We hoped, however, when we reached the James River we could put them up, since we’d be heading off at a different angle.
We could see a storm ahead of us towards Hampton. We hoped it would be gone by the time we got there. Well, it was gone from Hampton!
As we approached the Chamberlain Hotel, before crossing over the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, Petra called her daughter, who worked over at the local community college. She said there was a pretty bad storm over her way.
Partly cloudy. Scatter showers my @#$%.
We did put the sails up as we crossed the Bridge-Tunnel. But before we reached the Monitor Merrimac Bridge-Tunnel, the rain started. And it was coming down hard! I thought we were getting hail! Luckily, Petra and Dave had brought along rain jackets. I, of course, had my foul weather gear aboard. I also have a ton of extra stuff that was left by the previous owner (well, some of the stuff the left is useful!), and I loaned Petra a pair of rain pants.
So we were set. We took down the sails. Then the lightning started. And that’s when I was very glad that Dave was along. He knew about a pullout near the Monitor Merrimac Bridge where we could wait out the storm, which is just what we did. We parked and I pulled out some butternut squash soup I had aboard and we had lunch while the storm passed.
Bad thing about this whole experience was that our timing was then pretty far off. We hit the Nansemond river just as the sun was beginning to set. By the time we got to Bennett’s Creek, our final destination, it was dark. Cloudy skies. Last quarter moon. Luckily, there was enough light from the surrounding houses that we could at least see a little bit.
And, of course, there were shallow spots. But (pat, pat), I didn’t hit bottom once! Came close though. The James River current is pretty strong. Trying to stay the course when entering the Nansemond River was nigh to impossible.
We had one more white knuckle moment. We had to pass under some high voltage power lines. And, in the dark, it was hard to see if we were going to make it or not. As you can tell, since I’m writing this, we did.
I offered to take Dave and Petra to dinner, then renigged on the offer. I was plum tuckered out. But I did give them a rain check!
[Top]Cock Island – The Journey Home
Steve N and I took 4 Degrees back to Yorktown on Sunday. We didn’t get moving until about 11, after we had breakfast and said all our goodbyes.
It was hot, and the wind just wasn’t there as we traveled up the Elizabeth River. We began to fear we’d have to motor the entire way. No one else seemed to be having much luck either, so it wasn’t for our lack of trying.
As we turned the corner from the Elizabeth into the bay, our luck changed and the winds picked up. We actually had some pleasant sailing for awhile.
But, as we moved further up the bay, the waves got rougher and the winds got stronger. We were going downwind, and the winds were mainly off starboard, but Steve rigged a preventer, just in case, to prevent the main from whipping across the boat.
Not much longer after that, we took in the jib. But, by then, the winds were strong enough that it was difficult to roll it in smoothly.
My boat is well rigged for reefing the main. There are lines on the mainsail itself, as well as rigging on the boom. I asked Steve why we didn’t do so. He said we were moving well and he didn’t want to slow us down.
Um, yeah. Heavy winds will do that. And, as one friend said when I told him of this experience, by the time you think you should reef the main, it’s usually too late.
Kenny talked to me over the weekend about the experience of ‘surfing’ a sailboat. Sounded kind of strange to me. But we actually did that. We hit some of those waves just right that we rode their crests for a bit.
As time goes on and the weather gets worse, I’m getting more and more nervous. But I really got nervous when Steve put on a life jacket. I told him where the harness was, too, and he put that on. He then took the wheel and I went to don a life jacket as well.
And all this time, I’m wondering what I’m going to do if he falls over. I can’t reach the radio – I’m too nervous to leave the wheel. My cell phone is below, because I was afraid of losing it overboard. Only thing I can think to do is hit the ‘Man Overboard’ button on my GPS, to mark the location, and let someone know as soon as I get to port.
We see the storm rolling in, and the rain and lightning in the distance. It doesn’t look like it’s going to get better any time soon. Then the preventer broke. Luckily, neither of us was in the way when the main whipped across the cockpit. Steve commented later that next time, he should rig it with something heavier. My comment back was better that the preventer broke than something on the boat.
Finally, after his lifejacket is on, Steve brings down the mainsail. We still haven’t reached the mouth of the York River, so we have a couple of hours to go. But we’ll do that motoring, which is much safer.
We do make it to Wormley Creek safe and sound. And, as usual, there’s no wind in the marina, even though the storm is still playing itself out on the river.
It’s 6 o’clock now. It’s taken us 7 hours for the entire trip.
We finished putting everything away and Steve asked if I wanted to head somewhere for dinner. I didn’t. I gave him a hug, told him no thanks. I did thank him for coming with me. But right about then, I just wanted to go home, crawl into a fetal position, and thank the gods that I was still alive.
[Top]