Back to Chapter Ten - Japan Chapter Eleven
Club Sailing
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Chapter Eleven Club Sailing |
"Would you like to come sailing"?
It was 1995, and my cousin Sean was visiting from Sydney. He had come to the Sunshine Coast to see his accountant, Alan. Alan apparently had a sailboat.
"Ppfftt. I hate sailboats. As far as I'm concerned, if the weather is suitable for sailboats to have fun, it's too windy for me to go fishing."
Then I thought about it and realised that I had not been out on the water for five years, and I missed it. "Oh all right," I added reluctantly.
Alan's boat was a 34-foot sloop. He knew Sean was a keen fisherman, and Sean must have told him that I was too. There were two rod holders at the back of the boat, with rods in them at the ready. We sailed out of Mooloolaba on a reach. I didn't even know what a reach was then. It is when the wind is blowing sideways across the path of the boat. This is the fastest, safest, and the most comfortable point of sailing. If you start sailing on a reach, when you think you have sailed far enough, you can turn around and sail back on a reach with the wind on the other side of the boat. Back then I didn't know any of this either.
I did know when the reel on the rod nearest to me started to peel out line. I grabbed the rod and brought in a nice Mackerel. As it was thrashing about on the floor of the cockpit, I went to look up to Alan on the helm to ask him if he had a knife or a piece of wood to use as a pacifier. His eyes were like dinner plates. Without moving his lips his eyes said, "What is that filthy, frothing, bleeding, fish, doing on my yacht"?
He didn't mind when we cooked it on the BBQ back at his house that evening though. "Would you like to come sailing regularly on a Wednesday afternoon"? he asked me. I thought about this. I had heard the stories about doctors playing golf on Wednesday afternoons, but not about people going sailing. It would get me back on the water though, so I agreed.
WAGS was the abbreviation for Wednesday Afternoon Gentleman Sailors. Because of political correctness, this has been changed to Wednesday Afternoon General Sailing. SAGS is done on Saturday or Sunday. The idea is that this is not serious racing. In fact it is more correctly a fun sail to hopefully introduce new participants to the sport. However, as the saying goes, "What do you call two boats within sight of each other"? The answer, "A Race." Members of the public, locals or holidaymakers, can turn up and put their names down, and if a skipper has enough room on their boat and wishes to do so, they will take the person out as a guest for the afternoon.
Because of insurance companies and lawyers there are restrictions placed, such as no sanctioned sailing if the weather forecast is for a strong wind warning, and usually no spinnakers are allowed to be used. The guests may have never sailed before, and it is not good public relations to terrify, injure, or kill guests on their first sail.
I became one of five regular crew on 'Carillion'. There was Alan, the skipper, who had basically taught himself to sail by competing in WAGS. Pete was a retired merchant marine engineer. He was a big man, and usually stayed in the cockpit. There was Jeff, who had retired from the air force, but owned and cruised the coast in a trimaran, and Keith who was about my age, and had raced dinghy class of sailboats in Victoria. The rods were gone. The rod holders were gone. This boat had seen its last live fish aboard.
The problem for me was that Alan, Jeff, and Keith, had different ideas on the best way to make the boat go faster. I got very confused. I bought a book on sailing and borrowed more from the library, and started to read so as to understand better what they were all talking about. I didn't participate in any discussions, but later I would get the book out and work out in my own mind what I would have done.
During the next few years, as well as competing regularly in WAGS, we entered in some more serious local regattas where I got to learn how to use a spinnaker. We also entered some races that started in the daytime, and finished well after dark, so I got used to night sailing.
Many non-sailors believe that sailing is dangerous because of all the sensational stories they hear. Storms at sea with shipwrecks and drownings are usually the prime topic. It took two years of regular sailing before I encountered my first storm, and in the end it wasn't that bad. We were racing from Manly in Moreton Bay to Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast. This was a distance of about 50 nautical miles. We had a north-easterly wind that was coming basically from the direction we wanted to go.
I will digress here to explain how a sailboat sails into the wind. In fact they can't sail directly into the wind. But depending on the boat type and design, the cut and condition of the sails, and the skill of the helmsperson and crew, a sailboat can sail up to about forty-five degrees to the true breeze. This is because of aerodynamics. Unless the wind is behind the boat, a sailboat is not blown; it is sucked. A sail is a curved foil like an aeroplane wing. Wind arriving at the leading edge passes both sides at the same time. Because it spreads out further along the longer distance of the outer curve than the shorter inner curve, there are more spaces and less air molecules on the outer side. This means there is less air pressure on the outer side. Nature abhors imbalance and tries to equalise the pressures by moving air particles from the higher pressure on the inner side to the lower pressure on the outer side, except there is a foil/wing/sail in the way. This forces the sail to move outward which drags the boat along. By trimming the sails so that they have the correct angle to the wind the boat moves.
A sloop has one mast, and usually has two sails up at any one time, a headsail at the front, and a mainsail at the back. An experienced crew can alter the shape and angle of both of these sails to achieve the best effect. When the wind passes through the slot between the two sails, it creates an effect like the venturi on a carburettor. Having a well-shaped slot is one of the most important aspects of performance sailing.
Back to the race. As the day progressed we realised that the weather forecast of a possible thunderstorm could be true. We could see the black roll cloud building up behind us that stretched from outside Cape Morton across to the Blackall Range. This was a storm front about 70 kms wide. The north-easterly sea breeze was feeding into the approaching south-westerly storm. At about 8pm, and about 5 nautical miles from the finish at Mooloolaba, the storm hit us.
The twenty knot north-easterly dropped out suddenly. About fifteen seconds later fifty knots of south-westerly came in. Carillion was doing eight knots through the water with this wind behind us, and the wind speed indicator was reading about 42knots. Adding the two together when the wind is behind you gives the true wind strength.
I had no idea what to do. Luckily the others didn't have a discussion this time to decide. Jeff helmed while Keith controlled the mainsail. We had rolled the headsail around on its furler earlier so it was out of the way. Pete and I hung on, and Alan prepared lifejackets, got the EPIRB ready in case we needed to abandon ship, and started up the radar. The rain was so heavy that we could not see the lighthouse at Mooloolaba only five miles away. That was why we needed radar. My only real job was to hold a torch onto the compass so Jeff could see it. The internal light of the compass had decided not to play our game.
After a few minutes I realised we were not being tossed around much by waves. Wind will not sink a boat! The waves that wind creates will! However this had all happened so fast that there was not yet time to build up the sea. This is typical of a fast moving thunderstorm. Not only did the wind oppose the direction of the waves that had been coming from the old breeze from the north-east, but also the torrential rain had helped flatten the sea. We could see this with the frequent lightning flashes.
Now our biggest dangers would be to suffer a lightning strike, or a collision. We were in a yacht race. What is in a yacht race? Other yachts. Despite being able to see their red or green, port or starboard, running lights, we could not see which angle to us other boats were. In one lightning flash we saw one pass just behind our stern.
Eventually the wind moderated to about thirty knots, and we had good control of Carillion again. It eased even more as we changed from survival mode back into racing mode. We had not started the auxiliary diesel engine so we could still compete.
Nine years later this is still the most ferocious storm I have encountered. It only lasted less than an hour. I would not like to have to spend days in the open ocean in fifty knots because then the waves would be horrendous. This happens, but compared to the number of pleasant voyages that most sailors experience most of the time, these conditions occur rarely, and because of the many available methods of receiving weather information, every sailor should have a reasonable idea of the possible weather along their intended route, and take the best possible option, whether that be to stay in port, or go. No sailor should leave a sheltered harbour if the forecast is bad, but if you are caught out in it, you just have to make the best of it. Most crew will quit before the boat will. An often heard saying is that you only step up into a liferaft from the top of the mast as it is disappearing under the surface. Why would you leave a solid vessel to get into a tiny rubber cocoon otherwise? Many abandoned yachts turn up drifting at sea, or wrecked many miles away from where the crew abandoned them.
Cruising sailors seem to live healthier lives anyway. They are usually far removed from contagious illnesses, the stresses of 'normal' living, the poisons of processed food, and pollution.
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