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Today I went sailing for the third time this year. The weather was looking poor earlier in the week, but come Friday the forecast said t-storms in the morning, isolated rain later in the day (20%). Good enough for me; I can take a little rain as long as it’s not cold. I booked a boat for Sunday afternoon.

I had been hoping that Morris & Nichole would join me, but the overcast weather isn’t a great selling point. Without them (or anybody, actually — I called the usual suspects; no takers), I was left with a decision: call and cancel my boat reservation, or go out solo? I decided to go solo. The wind looked fairly weak (alternating between “calm” - that’s no wind - and 5mph) which made it seem more do-able, and, well, there’s a first time for everything.

By 3pm I was out in the creek hoisting my sails. I was on Natasha, a 22-footer with a roller-furling jib — perfect for the solo sailor. Hoisting the main can be challenging enough with two people. Not having to hoist the jib (instead, just unrolling it by pulling on a jib sheet) was a big advantage. With the main sail up I pulled out the jib, wound the starboard sheet around the winch, and sat back with my hand on the tiller.

The light winds and overcast sky made for nice conditions, even as motorboats and jetskis whizzed past. My last trip on the boat had been a bit rough - gusty winds made no time for relaxation - but this trip was turning out beautifully. I wasn’t speeding along, but it was like re-discovering what I’d enjoyed so much at the very beginning. A return to basics: a small boat, a breeze, and gentle, easy movement. I tend to enjoy sailing most when I feel in control of the boat.

As nice as it was, in time I was thirsting for more wind. The boat was hardly heeling in such light winds, and I could see other boats, sails full, out in the main channel. I could also see a deep blue haze that looked a lot like rain out there. I decided to head out toward it to see if the wind would pick up. Rain began to fall gently; undeterred, I donned my jacket and quickly accepted that my shorts would soon be a bit wet if it kept up like this. Really, I had no idea what I was in for. (Is that too dramatic?)

Looking back on it, now, I don’t remember things starting to get out of hand. They were just out of hand all at once. I remember seeing that the distant blue haze was suddenly gray curtain of rain, right on my heels, and that the wind had quickly become much more substantial than I had bargained for when making the decision, “Yeah, I’ll go solo,” cruelly trying to tip over my boat as it filled the main sail with wind. I’m quick about releasing the main sheet nowadays, spilling wind to keep the boat at a reasonable tilt, but now I had a problem I hadn’t bargained for: with so much wind whipping the sail this way and that, I had to get it down and fast, before the whipping snapped the slugs that hold the sail to the mast off one by one - pop! pop! pop! pop!

You can’t just drop the sail, though. To do it effectively you need to get the boat pointed straight into the wind so that the sail luffs back behind the mast and the slugs slide nicely down the track when you release the halyard that’s holding the head of the sail up at the top. The best way to do this is to have someone start the engine and point the boat into the wind while you stand up at the mast and pull the sail down, bundling it up around the boom. Without help, I could try to point the boat into the wind, but I couldn’t possibly keep it there with the increasingly large swells of lake water bobbing the boat about — the boat would rise on one swell and turn just slightly, enough to catch the wind on the bow and start turning the boat, enough for the sail to catch the wind and start really turning the boat.

Have I made it sound impossible? Good, because that’s what it felt like! I rolled up the jib easily enough (this would have been another disaster waiting to happen without the roller-furling jib) and tried to crank the engine. Instead the engine popped up out of the water (I later realized I had left it in gear and thus the starter cord wouldn’t pull freely). Flustered, I realized the boat was turning about and that the creek was now getting rather crowded with motorboats and houseboats fleeing from the wind and rain. I must have looked like a the biggest damn idiot on the lake - wet idiot - as I jumped from the cockpit to the top of the cabin, trying in vain to pull the sail down. The boat was turning in circles without anybody to hold the tiller still, the boom flip-flopping over the cockpit from having been loosened to spill wind, the rain relentlessly heavy. There are times in one’s life when you wish you could just walk away. I remember thinking that things were really going to hell when, while messing with the tiller, the sail was whipping around so much that the sail stopper - a small metal bolt-like device that holds the sail slugs in the track - came loose and flew back from the mast to the back of the boat.

Persistence paid off, however, and I managed to pull the sail down enough to tie it up around the boom. I cranked the engine and, somewhat in control, sat down with the tiller in hand to take stock of what had happened and where I was while the rain poured down. The creek had emptied out a little from what I could see. Two houseboats were nearby, and me, drenched, bobbing around with them. I contemplated taking the boat in and docking, but the lake was still tossing pretty heavily and I imagined it wouldn’t be a pleasant docking experience, so I decided to see how long the rain lasted. It couldn’t rain all afternoon and evening, could it?

It didn’t, and incredibly the downpour was reduced to a merely annoying drizzle, the gray curtain moving down the creek and leaving the houseboats and I out in fairly calm surroundings. I took advantage of the calm to pack up the sail. I was, to say the least, rattled, wondering if I would renew my club membership when it came due in August. This had been the first storm of any sort I’d ever had to contend with — on my first solo trip, no less! In retrospect moving closer to the rain was rather stupid, but that’s one mistake I won’t make twice. I would have been hit by it no matter what, but the wise move would have been to drop the sails while things were still reasonably calm.

In the midst of all of this sobering thinking, of all things, the sun was coming out. The loose overcast sky was giving way to patches of blue, and before long the still air was warm with sunlight. I was completely prepared to dock, but decided to hoist the sail once more instead. It was perhaps the best decision I made all weekend.

Though the following thirty minutes were mind-numbingly windless, it gave me plenty of time to get the boat back in order and pull out my iPod Shuffle, which I had packed on a whim. (If only I’d brought my PowerBook too, right?) I popped in the earbuds and, keeping a watchful eye on the lake around me, took hold of the tiller. Before long the wind returned, even steadier than it had been before the squall, a nice gentle breeze that afforded me a sublime beam reach along the creek, out toward the main channel with the sunshine drying my soaking wet sails and self.

The two hours that followed were right up there with some of the best of my life, quite frankly. I jibed and tacked lazily along, accompanied by “Beyond the Sea” (Royal Crown Revue version) at first, which seemed unusually fitting, followed by selections from The Stone Roses, Belle & Sebastian, Mighty Blue Kings, The Flaming Lips, Chris Isaak… I really can’t adequately express how good it felt — to have gone through such a mess and be rewarded with this slice of heaven on the other side. Perfection.

Somewhere during the storm-induced madness I concluded that it really was best that Morris & Nichole hadn’t come along. They might have made the struggle easier and safer, but I fear they would have left determined never to come back after an experience like that. (They are undoubtedly more resilient than that, but you get the idea.) The whole point of sailing is to have a relaxing, fun time on the lake — not to get your nerves a good working-over.

And, yeah, in a sense I’m glad nobody was available to join me out there. If they had been I wouldn’t have chanced to listen to “All Blues” with the sun glinting off of the water as the sails luffed and filled again in the gentle winds that carried me back to the dock. All is right, and all is well. Always darkest before the dawn. Always.

Posted: Sunday, May 15th, 2005 at 10:26 pm; Category: Sailing; Comments feed: RSS 2.0.
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