by tomodda » Thu Oct 07, 2021 10:43 pm
The Ugly:
Our last day was another beautiful sunny one, this time with a 20 knot north wind, gusting 25. As it was the weekend, my wife had come up to stay with us (Urbanna is only 3 hours from home), and brought the dogs and her girl-pal who also loves to sail, and HER Golden Retriever, born a water dog. House-party time! We all had great fun. But this last day.... We decided that we'd sail up to the creekside bar and my wife would drive over there and meet us. I decided that since it was our last sail and we were "only" sailing a mile (dead upwind, of course, so really 3 miles) and we had a good amount of weight in the boat, we wouldn't tie in a reef. Let's really enjoy the great wind! My son took the helm, I crewed, and we sat gal-pal in-between. She's not a great sailor, but knows enough to shift her weight, follow orders, has fun no matter what, and generally doesn't get in the way, and will even haul in on a line when asked to. She's crewed for me before (on lakes) and was allright. Did I mention that we also took my dog (40 lbs, sitting in the lazarette) and her Golden (90 lbs, lying under the cuddy, way up forward)? Between the five of us, dogs and people, plus gear, we were close to 800lbs! Anyway, I only realized that later... First we had to get out of the channel. It basically goes West to East with a dogleg and then a long breakwater. With a North wind, it ought be an easy reach, but of course the wind swirls around the headland so the entire way out of Urbanna was annoyingly upwind. But, no matter, I'm used to sailing in and out of harbors. The DS is so maneuverable, no problem tacking in the channel and dodging the other boats. Right at the dogleg, we had to fight the current and took several boards that only gained us 10-20 feet upwind each, tacking right up against the bulkhead on one side and shoals on the other... A bit of a slog, but as long as we're sailing, I'm good. Both my son and our passenger asked me "why not use the engine?" and I gave my standard answer of "I prefer to save it for when we really need it." Remember, I've got a little electric egg beater, wonderful machine but only has 1 hour of power at full throttle. I'm generally very conservative on the water - one of the few non-stupid things that I did on this day.
But so far, we were doing well. My son was at the helm and tending the mainsheet, I was handling the jib and generally giving orders (that's me!) and our passenger was changing sides smartly on each tack. Dogs were balancing each other out fore and aft, and I was hiking a bit in the gusts, enough to keep us on our feet. Most importantly, my son and I were communicating well, I'd tell him when to head up or ease off, warn him of oncoming puffs and headers, and he was letting me know how the helm felt, how the main was behaving. "Dad, I'm feeling some weather helm!" and I'd ease the vang for him, let the main twist off, trim the jib a bit, adjust the inhaulers and jib car to match the new mains'l set.... After a week sailing together, we were pretty finely tuned.
My son kept a good helm and watched the mainsail leech, and I watched the wind and waves and kept our jib trimmed properly. Once we were out of the dogleg, we found ourselves protected by a half-mile of breakwater upwind and on a nice reach, maybe 70 degrees to the wind. Smooth water, 20 kt wind, we HOWLED, it was a blast! Of course, we soon ran out of breakwater and straight into the chop. "Want me to head up?" Seafood Creek, as we called it, was a mile away dead upwind, so we had a punishing beat ahead of us. By the way, if you're following this little adventure on the NOAA Chart, it's really called Robinson Creek, the whole ensuing mess happened in a shockingly small bit of water. But dead upwind in the teeth of a nasty chop. "Don't head up yet, hold your course, let's get a feel for her in the chop." Wham! Wham! Wham! But we were doing OK, quartering into the chop, moving well. In retrospect, I should have felt how much she was plowing thru the waves with all our weight instead of dancing over them... But we were OK, right? Even though I was taking green spray in my face, my turn to be a sprayshield! Soon I was soaked from head to toe (revenge from all my prior crews), but the water was warm. Even if I had to spit out a mouthful every few seconds. All good, let's try heading up a bit.. BAM! BAM! BAM! Yeah, maybe that's a bit too much, let's keep at a loose reach, say 60 degrees to the wind. We've got all morning, what's an extra few tacks? We were FINE, my son and I had already sailed a rough chop earlier in the week and it was great. We really flew across the river on a single reef that day. One of the local stink-potters warned us that it was too rough that day and we just laughed. Laughed even more when we got back to Harbour and he couldn't believe we had crossed the river. We hadn't even spilled our beer!
But back to today... The 5 of us... We were rapidly reaching out into the middle of the river and the chop was building up to 3+ feet as it had at least 15 miles of fetch to the north. It was like being at the far end of an enormous skinny wave pool, we were really feeling it. Time to tack back to shore... Carefully.
Last edited by
tomodda on Fri Oct 08, 2021 2:00 am, edited 5 times in total.