Father's Day!
We had a terribly exciting Father's Day at Kensington. Nearly died!
Andrew was up north visiting his gf, so it's just me and the ol' Mom and Dad. We show up amidst lovely sunshine, rig the boat (an 18-foot Interlake), and BAM, it starts pouring. So we stand under a tree, huddle in the van, and ten minutes later the sky is all perfectly blue and amazing and the sun is about to eat the world. Beautiful.
At this point, the Applegate family is just arriving on the other side of Kent Lake, where they keep their boat, but the three of us decide to start sailing. The plan is that we'll all meet up back on our side of the lake for dinner after they get their boat pumped out, rigged, and sailing.
So Mum and Dad and I have a lovely hour, hour and a half sail - it was PERFECT sailing, honestly, warm and sunny and a nice strong breeze. We taught Mom how to skipper and I stood on the bow for awhile and we practiced hiking out and all that good stuff. But eventually we got hungry, so we sailed back in, met up with Claudia and Mark, who'd driven their van over, and had some snacks. Carsten and Corinna were still out on the lake in their boat, doing god knows what, but not coming in for dinner. (Later it turned out that massive amounts of seaweed on their centerboard was prohibiting proper tacking up wind.)
The wind was SO GREAT that Dad and I decided to head out quickly to round up C and C - we weren't sure they knew that we were waiting for them for dinner. Of course, even after we'd gotten out there and relayed the message, Dad insisted on sailing around a bit more before heading back in.
WE'RE GETTING TO THE EXCITING PART.
So we're zooming along, just the two of us, and the wind just keeps picking up. "Maybe we should reef," Dad suggests. (Reefing means shortening the sail.) "Nah," I say. "Lame. I like going this fast." Plus we didn't have the jib up at all - thus, I had no job, but was just gazing out in front of the boat.
TWO SECONDS LATER, I hear Dad say, "Shit!" and I turn around to see him HOLDING THE TILLER UP IN THE AIR. Meaning that it was NOT ATTACHED TO THE RUDDER AT ALL. Meaning, of course, that we had NO WAY TO STEER.
In the next 1/8 of a second, all of the following things happened:
1. The boat instantly swung downwind (to a faster point of sail.)
2. Dad jumped to the low side of the boat to attempt to fix the tiller.
3. The main sheet cleated itself.
4. An enormous gust of wind hit the cleated sail AND THE BOAT CAPSIZED.
I know I sound completely useless in all of this, but it honestly happened TOO FAST. I did leap to the high side of the boat when I noticed it tipping, but my weight was useless - all that this meant was that I got a crazy view of the water below me, the sail falling hopelessly to the water, and Dad sliding out of the hull, before I was jarred off and fell the four or five feet to the water, scraping my bare side along a cleat on the boom in the process and banging my elbow on the boom. Narsty.
Once in the water, though, a total elation hit me. I looked at Dad and said, "No worries. I'm an expert at this," kind of grinning. The run-down from sailing camp was already rushing through my head. I checked to be sure Dad was okay, we uncleated the main sheet, and we swam around to the back of the boat.
There was an awful moment when we thought the boat was going to turtle and trap us underneath, which FREAKED ME OUT, but we somehow managed to not have that happen.
After this it's just a long and exhausting story. We climbed up on the centerboard, but with the sail and the cockpit both full of water, it was too heavy to flip. (Although some drunken rowboat-ers did offer to help.) A ranger came by eventually in a pontoon boat - we hooked up a line and tried to use his boat to upright ours, but all we did was rip a piece off the hull. Oops. Eventually he just towed our fallen boat to shallower water, near an island, and we took the sail off in the water and raised the mast by hand, standing in waist-deep water. Then we dumped the soaked sail into the hull, jumped in ourselves, and bailed all the way back to the docks as the nice ranger man towed us in. (It took us two tries back at the docks to actually come to a stop; the first time we nearly smashed off four people's motors.)
So we didn't actually almost die - but it was rather exciting nonetheless.
Andrew was up north visiting his gf, so it's just me and the ol' Mom and Dad. We show up amidst lovely sunshine, rig the boat (an 18-foot Interlake), and BAM, it starts pouring. So we stand under a tree, huddle in the van, and ten minutes later the sky is all perfectly blue and amazing and the sun is about to eat the world. Beautiful.
At this point, the Applegate family is just arriving on the other side of Kent Lake, where they keep their boat, but the three of us decide to start sailing. The plan is that we'll all meet up back on our side of the lake for dinner after they get their boat pumped out, rigged, and sailing.
So Mum and Dad and I have a lovely hour, hour and a half sail - it was PERFECT sailing, honestly, warm and sunny and a nice strong breeze. We taught Mom how to skipper and I stood on the bow for awhile and we practiced hiking out and all that good stuff. But eventually we got hungry, so we sailed back in, met up with Claudia and Mark, who'd driven their van over, and had some snacks. Carsten and Corinna were still out on the lake in their boat, doing god knows what, but not coming in for dinner. (Later it turned out that massive amounts of seaweed on their centerboard was prohibiting proper tacking up wind.)
The wind was SO GREAT that Dad and I decided to head out quickly to round up C and C - we weren't sure they knew that we were waiting for them for dinner. Of course, even after we'd gotten out there and relayed the message, Dad insisted on sailing around a bit more before heading back in.
WE'RE GETTING TO THE EXCITING PART.
So we're zooming along, just the two of us, and the wind just keeps picking up. "Maybe we should reef," Dad suggests. (Reefing means shortening the sail.) "Nah," I say. "Lame. I like going this fast." Plus we didn't have the jib up at all - thus, I had no job, but was just gazing out in front of the boat.
TWO SECONDS LATER, I hear Dad say, "Shit!" and I turn around to see him HOLDING THE TILLER UP IN THE AIR. Meaning that it was NOT ATTACHED TO THE RUDDER AT ALL. Meaning, of course, that we had NO WAY TO STEER.
In the next 1/8 of a second, all of the following things happened:
1. The boat instantly swung downwind (to a faster point of sail.)
2. Dad jumped to the low side of the boat to attempt to fix the tiller.
3. The main sheet cleated itself.
4. An enormous gust of wind hit the cleated sail AND THE BOAT CAPSIZED.
I know I sound completely useless in all of this, but it honestly happened TOO FAST. I did leap to the high side of the boat when I noticed it tipping, but my weight was useless - all that this meant was that I got a crazy view of the water below me, the sail falling hopelessly to the water, and Dad sliding out of the hull, before I was jarred off and fell the four or five feet to the water, scraping my bare side along a cleat on the boom in the process and banging my elbow on the boom. Narsty.
Once in the water, though, a total elation hit me. I looked at Dad and said, "No worries. I'm an expert at this," kind of grinning. The run-down from sailing camp was already rushing through my head. I checked to be sure Dad was okay, we uncleated the main sheet, and we swam around to the back of the boat.
There was an awful moment when we thought the boat was going to turtle and trap us underneath, which FREAKED ME OUT, but we somehow managed to not have that happen.
After this it's just a long and exhausting story. We climbed up on the centerboard, but with the sail and the cockpit both full of water, it was too heavy to flip. (Although some drunken rowboat-ers did offer to help.) A ranger came by eventually in a pontoon boat - we hooked up a line and tried to use his boat to upright ours, but all we did was rip a piece off the hull. Oops. Eventually he just towed our fallen boat to shallower water, near an island, and we took the sail off in the water and raised the mast by hand, standing in waist-deep water. Then we dumped the soaked sail into the hull, jumped in ourselves, and bailed all the way back to the docks as the nice ranger man towed us in. (It took us two tries back at the docks to actually come to a stop; the first time we nearly smashed off four people's motors.)
So we didn't actually almost die - but it was rather exciting nonetheless.