10-8-11 0705 West End Beach, Naushon, Cape Cod. Sunup , the wind is now blowing 20 for sure, and there are whitecapped waves breaking all over Buzzards Bay. It’s clear as the proverbial bell, with a cloudless sky, quite warm. I am not going to try landing to look for new coyote tracks. Instead, I cook up another bacon and eggs, this time without fireball (less fuel worked!), put in a double reef , which should make the sail manageable in up to 25 mph winds, pull out the stern anchor (satisfactorily difficult) and start the mighty 6 HP engine. By 0800 we are under motor, and after a few hundred yards of safety from the lee shore, I hoist up the double reefed sail and whoa, we are careening along, downwind, back towards Woods Hole.
No thought of trying to go upwind. Instead, I’ll ride the wind along the Buzzards Bay shore to places like West Falmouth, that I go by at about mile 7 on the bike path on the way to work. A perfect day to go, and even with an ebb tide against, we seem to be making good time. There’s a big sea running, waves over 5 feet seems like, but Susie P slides happily along, with little DR, now loaded with flotsam lobster bouys, scampering behind.
As we hit the rip on a point just East NE of Kettle Cove, as Susie P has just reached the bottom of one of those ‘over 5 feet waves’, there is a whole new hisssss kind of sound, and I look back to check DR. No, not down where she should be; now DR is up ABOVE the level of Susie P’s amply chubby and quite high stern, and that ‘hisssss’ is the sound of surfing!!. This is yet another boating error (#5, I think), not restricted to solo sailing, in which the line towing the tender behind is not long enough to keep the tender off a large following sea. And DR, bouys and all, is apparently a pretty good surfer, because it comes hissing right down the wave and smashes into Susie P’s bum , actually getting its bow over the transom, before losing momentum, wallowing in the wake, and then being violently jerked around by the tow line.
I carefully tie in a longer piece of line, using the prescribed knots. There, now DR is on a longer leash; problem solved.
We come up level with Wee Peckets. The wind seems lighter now, maybe we could sail faster with only a single reef, and it’s a good time to practice reefing without using the motor to stabilize the boat. I do a couple of these maneuvers with a lot of slop, and then one good enough to get the sail down. Hove to, Susie P seems content, but DR is kiting around on the end of the long tow line, so I pull it in and re-fasten up short. I take out the second reef, leaving one in, and hoist up the throat and gaff halyards (ropes fastened to the front and back of the piece that supports the top of a gaff rigged sail and passing over pulleys at the top of the mast). Whoa, hmmm, maybe I should have stayed with two reefs. But with more power, it’s easier to come about to a new tack direction. Its only after the second practice tack that I look downwind and see a skiff that someone must have lost floating all by itself about half a mile away. Looks a lot like… Well, apparently that last ‘fasten up short’ I didn’t make two bights on the cleat…or something… Error # 6 maybe, but who’s keeping count? It’s time to practice ‘recovering lost skiff on high seas while sailing single handed”. But at least, having lost DR before, I have a pretty good plan for this, and in a gratifyingly short time we recapture the little runaway and her load of buoys.
With more sail, the restful part of the day turns out to be over. About 10 we pass by Woods Hole, and come in closer near my home beach, Gansett, watching for rocks, and looking for new vistas. The relationship of points that I usually only reach at the end of woodsy roads is quite striking. Things are much closer together than I conjectured. Some houses are much grander that I thought, and some beaches look much prettier from the sea. Sippewissett, which we loved for it’s long rockfree gently shelving white sand and spartina crested sand dunes is, if anything, even more beautiful than my memories. Racing Beach has rocks offshore that would make any race pretty exciting. Gunning Point, which I remember as being desolate, turns out to be full of mansions now.
West Falmouth Harbor has a narrow entrance, kept open by rock jetties on both sides, and is well marked by channel buoys. Full of confidence from the ride downwind, and the rolling waves, I start the motor but keep the sail up. Once inside, the wind is blocked, and with both motor and sail we pick our way down a very narrow winding channel, and then drop the sail and use a lead line to sound out the channel. I like doing this, because electronic depth sounders have made lead lines archaic, but I don’t have a depth sounder, and I like the atavistic image I must be making. However, there aren’t many people around to be reactive. Several small boys are scratching for clams, and a couple of adults are doing things on their boats. I think of hooking up to someone else’s mooring, and actually snag a mooring line with the boathook, but think better of it, and put the boathook down, heave over the Danforth, and anchor. It’s good to rest after the downhill. I admire the harbor full of small boats; lots of fellow catboats, lots of sailboats generally, and someone has lost a boathook, it's floating away. It looks a lot like….. Well, I did put it down, didn’t I? Another error(#7); things are not to be put down in single handed sailing, they are to be PUT BACK!. I guess Sala would be happier if I applied this lesson in shore based life as well. Well, maybe rowing after a runaway boathook in a previously run away dinghy/skiff will finally larn me.
Marmelade, a 25 foot wooden catboat arrives, having sailed from Hyannis..about the same distance but at least half upwind. It would be nice to gam for a while, but actually, if I want to get back in time for dinner, I should get moving.
I’m not going to describe in detail my learning experience of problem #8, which is tying off the halyards to prevent their making clanging noises while you eat lunch and then forgetting it and trying to hoist the sail with same halyards, thus creating complex rope jam while maneuvering around other boats sitting innocently at their moorings. But I can definitely check off that as a lesson practiced, if not learned.
And the trip back was great..not as in great for Fuji, who doesn’t like pots and pans leaping off the stove as the boat comes onto starboard tack, and then the sleeping bag she is snuggling into leaping off onto the pots and pans when the boat comes about onto port. But Fuji isn’t here, and although Sala has emphatic reservations about sailing with the lee rail in the water, I don’t. Because Susie P is short, she’s not fast upwind in a rolling chop, but she’s amazingly predictable. Because she’s fat as well as short, she pitches a lot, kind of like a short roller coaster ride really. And the day is still bright, the air is sparkling and full of the smells of ocean and seaweed, and Mama N has thrown in just enough gull cries and other boats under sail to make it memorable.
By 4 o’clock, we go onto starboard tack off Penzance, and head for The Hole. The solar charger has finally caught up with the iphone, and I checked the current chart during the lunch break, and confirmed the current changed at about 3:45. Meanwhile, the wind has actually INCREASED a bit; later I will find out it was logged at 25 mph. So the single reef is becoming problematic.
What happens when Susie P is carrying too much sail is that it becomes harder and harder to manage her ‘weather helm’. This is the saving grace of the catboat breed; when the wind blows too hard, rather than capsizing, the boat heads up into the wind, thus decreasing pressure on the sail. It’s what makes them so safe.
However, in order to get through The Hole with the current, we need to head downwind now, and that’s NOT something that Susie P is in a mood to let me do. If the wind keeps up like this, as I come into the channel where the current is probably running 3 mph, I will have to jibe the sail, meaning move it from starboard tack to port tack. If I do nothing, the wind itself could cause the jibe, which means the sail, still pretty big with only one reef, will be blown suddenly around the mast, ending with a crunch as it hits the end of the sheet rope, and putting a lot of pressure on the mast itself. This error is called ‘jibe all standing’, and is regarded as one of the basic No-No’s of catboating.
We are making 6 mph, hull speed, and the current adds another several mph, so decisions have to be made. Well, Uncatena island should create a wind shadow over this Western end of The Hole, so with the motor going, and much less wind, I should be OK. Meanwhile, it’s taking all of my strength to pull the tiller against the ‘weather helm’ and even get to The Hole.
At least two of the boats approaching at the same time seem to be under power, but so am I, so right of way is an issue. But look, they are holding back, perhaps out of horror, perhaps courtesy for small fat overpowered sailboats.
The waves have gone away, and just on time, the wind drops. Hooray. With only one medium sized power boat coming the other direction, I jibe the sail, head across the current, and actually make the out of channel but more direct route into Great Harbor.
Well, I think the total error score for this voyage is ONLY 7!, and this time it didn’t include missing the mooring (got it!!) or losing the skiff (two bights on the cleat) or getting hit with the swinging boom (duck!!) or even leaving my shoes on the boat(check twice). Back in time for dinner, with the unexpected lesson from error number #7: put things back, not down, when you have finished using them.
Alan
No comments:
Post a Comment