The first thing about sailboats is that sails are not motors. Mine has tremendous (for the size of the boat) square footage. When the wind is strong, all that area is pulling too hard. I believe the word is “overpowered”. Overpowered may look cool on the label of an energy drink or some dude’s GoPro video but that’s not my game. An intelligent sailor reduces sail area until the power provided by nature matches what the boat (and in my case, its chichkenshit operator) can manage.
There’s a way to do that. A “reef point” is a series of tie points you use to make the sail smaller. The sail, once it is “reefed”, is smaller, and thus produces less power. Depending on where you manage the boom and an array of other ropes, this lesser area can be balanced lower in height above the hull. Thus, reducing the force trying to tip (“heel over”) your boat. Thus, reducing the risk of a capsize. Win, win!
A wise sailor would’ve read the conditions and “reefed” before leaving the dock. A skilled sailor would “reef” right in the maelstrom. A schmuck like me looks for a good place to hide from the wind and ideally beach somewhere safe for an epic bout of knot tying.
Like a social justice warrior overwhelmed by reality, I needed a safe space. The lake was oddly shaped with a very narrow inlet (or outlet, depending on your point of view). The narrow spot was crosswise with the wind, which was good. If the wind was blowing into it, it might shove me into a spot from which I can’t return and I’ll run up against rocks at the shore. It the wind was blowing out of it, I’d never be able to get in there. Instead it was just right. I shouted “hard a starboard” (there was nobody to hear but I earned the right to say it), shifted my weight to the opposite side of the small boat, yanked the rudder, brought up my arm to catch the boom which would certainly try to guillotine me, and pivoted the boat in its own length.
I’d executed not just a 90 degree turn but more like 120 degrees. I’d done this in a fluid medium with the speed that usually involves screeching tires, yet the boom just sat there. WTF?
Only then did I realize the wind had stopped dead calm. Off like a light switch.
“What the…” Crash!
The wind reappeared, the boat lurched wildly, the sail reinflated in the exact opposite side it had been before I executed the maneuver and the boom came at my lead like a Louisville Slugger.
My arm was still extended. I had no idea what was happening but the lizard brain knew what to do. On instinct I caught the boom like a boss. Wasting no time, I ducked a bit, flipped it over my head, and the sail inflated behind my back. The boat charged into the outlet.
I had no idea where this would lead. It was a long sinuous affair; a couple hundred yards wide when I entered but narrowing to 60’ in a matter of seconds.
Lucky for me it was deeply wooded on both sides. This cut the wind and now my boat wasn’t overpowered. In fact, it was perfect. I flitted about like hummingbird, circling great rocks in the narrow passage like a barrel racer. Sailing in thin (shallow) water that would eat a deep keel boat is risky but fun. Nothing was affecting my 3’ daggerboard (“retractable keel”) so it might as well be a mile deep to me. For about ten minutes I zipped back and forth like a fool; whooping and laughing.
Of course, the narrower it got, the more I was playing with fire. With less room to maneuver, the odds I’d Titanic my ass into a glacial erratic began to increase. (A glacial erratic is a big ass boulder sitting where the ice left it. Picture a boulder the size of a garbage truck sitting in 4’ of water in the middle of the lake where there is no reason for a rock to exist. Also note, there have been big swings in climate in the past. Chicago was once under a mile thick sheet of ice. This is why I don’t lose sleep when some global warming headline announces the sea is now three millimeters higher.)
Eventually, I pulled up the keel (“daggerboard”) and also the retractable rudder and drifted into the dead calm in the lee of a little granite cliff. I was in a foot of water a mere 10’ from shore. It was a gorgeous spot. It smelled of pine and adventure. I glanced at my fishing gear but the boat was already pinwheeling out of control. No keel and minimal rudder will do that!
Bravely, I untied the halyard (“a line that lifts the “yard”) and dropped it and the boom and the sail, on my shoulders. (The “yard” is a mini-boom that supports the top edge of my sail. In my case, the sail is a quadrilateral, the yard holds the upper edge and the boom the lower.)
No longer a sailor in a tiny but wickedly exciting craft, now I was a chump beneath a pile of wet laundry in a floating box. It was time to reef the sail.
When you “reef” a sail there’s the extra fabric that can no longer be free to catch the wind. If it catches the wind you screwed up the reef! You are supposed to “flake” this material in an elegant zig zag pattern and tie it up with the ropes at the “reef point”. I tried to “flake” but I really just wadded it up like a cheap sleeping bag. Nonetheless the reef point knots (several of them) seemed to hold it secure.
Some boats have no reef points (God help them!), some have one, some have more. Mine has two, which is (in my humble opinion) NOT too many for my diminutive craft.
After doing all the hassle of one reef I did the next. I don’t think you have to do it in two steps but I did. Now my boat was “double reefed” and the formerly massive (in my eyes) sail was a tiny little table cloth strapped to a beefy boom that looked like I’d tied a messy fabric anaconda to it. I hoisted all this back up the mast but not (as I initially expected one would) to the top. I’ve learned I can keep the tiny reefed sail much lower. This means any wind is much less aggressive on the boat’s tilt (“heel”) and also I preserve the delightful option of getting walloped by the boom. Wouldn’t want to lose that feature!
By my reckoning, I’d cut the nuts off my own boat’s power source and it looked pathetic; like removing a mighty flag and replacing it with a pair of underwear. But the goal is control not speed.
Deep breath, sip some water, and back at it. I used an oar to shove off and drifted back out of the little safe zone I’d been using. I hated to go. There might be fish there!
Your post brought back memories of sailing with friends as a youth, and the opportunities to sail with my brother on his catamaran. Nothing is like sailing, and it brings an admiration of those that mastered the art to brave the oceans.