Every now and then when on a passage you have a moment, when everything clicks and you think yeah, I could keep on doing this for a while.
Last night I was awakened about half an hour before my watch to help bring the sails in. The wind had died and we have a VERY firm safety rule board that nobody ever leaves the cockpit without someone else knowing about it. With the wind petering out to near nothing the sails start to flop as the boat starts to slow and roll more.
With our normal in shore main and Genoa combination of sails you can set the sails, reef them, and pull them in without leaving the cockpit. Off shore we have a different setup. First, we use our staysail more so we have a second inner forestay on the deck with this sail attached to it. Unlike the other sails it does not furl so it must be manually hoisted and lowered.
With the staysail also come the Check Stays, which are lines that run from the mast at the point where the inner forestay attaches to the stern. These have blocks with a 4:1 purchase on them, the upwind check stay must be tensioned very firmly, we put it on a winch. The leeward (downwind) check stay can be loose, and in it’s deployed position is a pain in the neck as it is taught behind the main sail and prevents the sail from going out. So the check stay must be loosened to allow the main to be eased which in turn means the check stay is swinging freely and rubbing an banging the boom. To prevent this we’ve been tying a small line to the check stay and securing it out of the way much like a girl with long hair will stick her hair behind an ear to keep it out of her face when she works on something in front of her.
The final offshore complication is the preventer”. It can roll a lot out in the ocean with constant swells. This motion can cause the sails to move, spilling the air. The head sails there isn’t much that can be done and beyond flogging the sails a bit they don’t do much harm. The main sail is on the boom which is heavy and can cause damage. An unintentional jibe (of gybe) where the wind passes from one side of the boat to the other behind the boat can cause the boom to slam from one side of the boat to the other with extreme violence. And as the boat rolls and bounces in the swell the boom comes up and moves and slams back when the sails fill again, bouncing and banging and causing wear and potential mayhem.
Being sailors we do what sailors do tie the darn thing down. In this case a line runs to the end of the boom which must be secured forward (to prevent the boom moving back, the main sheet arrests forward motion). Typing it up forward is a nuisance as someone must run all the way forward to the bow and untie it to make adjustments. Instead we run it through a block on the bow and return it to the stern where it is much easier to make adjustments without going forward. But someone still needs to leave the cockpit.
So sailing off shore with the sail out involves several extra steps to douse the sails drop the staysail and tie it up, ease the preventer to allow centering the main sail, and removing the tie line from the check stay and tightening it up to stop it flopping all over the place. This is no longer a solo operation.
About an hour after we doused the sails and about half an hour into my midnight to three o’clock watch we were still motoring when the wind came up gain. I was by myself in the cockpit, everyone else was below asleep, and I could tell I was getting wind back to sail. We left the main sail up because not-flat conditions when motoring the sail acts as a serious damper on boat motion, without it we would roll back and forth a lot more. So it is typical to motor-sail with the main up unless what little wind there is causes the sail to flog.
Working slowly I let out the Genoa and killed the engine. The breeze was PERFECT, about fifteen knots just forward of the center of the boat. I cracked the main off as far as I could against the taught leeward runner, trimmed the Genoa, and sat back with a smile.
The sailing conditions were right in Evenstar’s sweet spot. When you hit a line drive off the meat of a baseball bat or catch your driver perfectly straight up the middle of the fairway with no slice or hook you can feel it when you’ve done it right. Just so with Evenstar reaching in fifteen knots of breeze. The boat is powered up and moving fast but not over powered, the sails are trim and taught there is little moving or flapping the boat feels as right as it can.
Couple that with a bright evening with perfect temperatures and a near full moon dappling the water with reflected light, no noise but the splashing and hissing of the hull through the waves, and you just have to sit back, breathe deep and enjoy the moment.
