Sailing Away: Tacking into Storm and Sunset

Tacking into Storm and Sunset

The Skipper (Tim Mehrer) (who probably hates to be called skipper) came into the passengers compartment one morning and gave us an absolutely brilliant talk on sailing, boats, and the physics of sailing. Now, I thought I understood how to sail and what did what. I was mistaken. He brought a white board and a boat model and proceeded to show us how the universe conspires to push Zodiac forward through contrary seas.

The secret is low pressure zones. We create low pressure zones with the wing shapes of the sails, and that pulls us toward our goal. Oh, and the wind also is just pushing on the flat parts. But that is only really helping us going down wind. When we want to go up wind, we need the air to suck our sails toward the low pressure zone we have created at a point that we hope is balanced between our huge sails (each pulling at a different vector) and the center of mass and center of rotation or our vessel. Ok, I made up a lot of those terms. But Hell, it was a one time 30 minute talk and that is what I remember.

Anyway, when you want to go to where the wind is coming from (and for some reason, you usually do, thank you very much Mr. Murphy), you have to approach it at angles of about 45 degrees. And each time you change your angle of attack, you bring the bow of the boat across the wind, and that is called tacking.

And when you do that, you have to, in a controlled manner, bring the sails across to the other side of the boat. This isn't too difficult as long as you can maintain a controlled rate of turn and you don't let go of any line at the wrong time.

For instance.

My sailing station is mainsail topping lifts. The topping lift is the cable coming down from the mast that holds up the boom. It literally stops the boom from crashing to the deck (and thus killing the captain, since the boom is usually right over his head). On many pleasure sail boats, there is just one topping lift. It comes from the top of the mast, and goes down to the end of the boom. The Mainsail is the triangle between the topping lift, mast, and boom.

However, on the Zodiac, The mainsail is larger than this triangle (because of the extension that the gaff-boom gives it) so you need to tighten the topping left that is on the windward side of the sail and then loosen the one on the lee side.

Topping left has the fuzzy things. Aft Stay is in the block on the right there. (The right is port, in this case)

Equally important, since the boom extends beyond the stern of the boat, you also need to use a flying aft mainstay. That is the line that runs from near the top of the main mast down to the stern and supports (stays) the mast from aft. Someone must have been doing that, but I never saw it because I was busy doing the topping lift thing.

It goes like this.

The captain tells the first mate to prepare to come about.

At about the same time he tells helm to come hard over to windward. (on the Zodiac, this means that the helmsman starts turning the wheel toward the wind. This takes a while. You turn hand over hand for many complete rotations of the ships wheel until you have brought the rudder hard over. At this point, when I was on the wheel, I said to the captain, “we are hard over, Sir”. He gave me a strange look. But he smiled. Perhaps he hasn't read “Master and Commander” enough times. Perhaps I have read it too often.)

As the boat comes up, the pressure comes off the sails. Now the boat is just coasting. In order to tack, we have to have enough headway on the boat to be able to make the 90 degree turn from one tack to the other. If we don't make the turn, the wind will start pushing on the bow of the boat (and the masts and other “windage”) and the schooner will continue to slow and eventually go backwards. This is considered non-ideal and is called (at least by Captain Aubrey) "missing stays".

Today, however, we have a good wind and are making a good pace through the seas. So the bow comes right around and we don't need to do any tricks (like backing the jib to push the bow around faster). We have two topping lift crews, one on the side that is currently providing support, one on the side that will be the support after we tack. The “new” side waits until the pressure has come completely off of the slack topping lift cable. If we tighten it up too early, we will chaff the sail. Not terrible as a one time occurrence, but those sails are expensive. Think of it as turning off the light when you leave a room. So, as soon as we have slack, we pull pull pull to get the slack rope through the blocks, then, we start to “sweat” and “tail”. The sweater is in charge of tightening the line, the tailer is in charge of making sure we don't loose any of the progress the sweater is making. He just has to take up the slack that the sweater has gained.

Sweat and Tail on that Topping Lift !!

One of the things I love about sailing is the constant and ubiquitous demonstration of basic physics and simple machines. Here we have a huge boom, the weight of which needs to be support by a line that a single person is going to tighten. And we do that using physics. Does the sweater just pull down? Well, she could do that, but that would just put their mass into the equation, and that might not be enough (even with the 6:1 block and pulley). So instead, she pulls down and sideways. Effecting make a lever out of the line. So she pulls sideways about 3 feet. And that gains us 1 foot slack, which I tail through the belaying pin. Once we have pulled enough line (marked by a little piece of leather on the halyard) I yell “hold” and throw a figure 8 and locking not on the belaying pin.

Done with the hold side. We look under the boom and make eye contact with the other team. They can now loosen their side. Making eye contact is a safety thing. They don't want to let loose until they are sure we are secure, because we don't want that boom coming crashing down on the deck, taking out the captain and helmsman (and helm).

Up on the bow, the jib and staysail crew are busy sheeting in the sails on the opposite side of the boat and the foresale is being secured also. We are on the other tack and starting to pick up speed. But we aren't done until we have coiled down all of the lines and prepared things for the next tack.

That done, I sit back on the high side (which we suddenly have, the breeze must be freshining) and start to look around. The wind is coming in over the starboard side. So we are on a Starboard tack. Cool. We are sailing North West along the US Canada border heading toward our evening anchorage. I look off to the south toward Orcas Island. It is sure looking dark over that way. Wind and Rain. I recall the story the captain told us about a family that went to the bottom around in this area because of a errant wind coming down off of Mount Constitution (that big hill there on Orcas, the one with the antennas). He had a nautical term for that wind. It started with a W. Now what was it....

“Prepare to Come About”.

“Helm Alee”

Woe there, we are turning faster this time. The wind is picking up even more. We go onto port tack quite smartly. Now we are HAVING FUN !! The deck has a definite slope to it now as we heel to starboard. The Captain, in his quiet way, instructs a few non-sailor passengers to come up to the high side of the schooner. It is harder to fall overboard from the high side. We are really moving now !! Everyone is laughing and there is a wild excitement in the air. Some rain drops are hitting our heads, or perhaps that is ocean spray.

She is standing straight up. The boat is slanted.

Look at those smiles.

“Prepare to Come About”

What the hell. We just got here. Oh, we must be trying to tack into that little bay over there.

“Helm's Alee”.

We turned fast again.... and then we just stopped turning. What? Something is wrong up on the bow. Our crewman leaves us and runs up to the port jib sheets. Something got stuck. I think that stopped our turn. And the wind is blowing even harder. The rain is falling. The captain isn't liking this. This isn't good weather to be teaching a neophyte passenger-crew how to do highspeed tacking. And he knows that. He eases us back onto our previous tack and gives to order to lower the mainsail. (The captain later told us that the real thing he was concerned about was the inflatable boats that we had hanging on the side had a tendency to catch a strong wind, and he didn't want them bouncing off the ocean as the Zodiac heeled and then catch the wind and come roaring onto the deck, engine and all. Bad for the deck. And the passengers).

The Topping lift team also owns lowering the mainsail, and we couldn't get it down quickly enough for the captain. To lower the sail, you just need to belay the 100 yards of main halyard through the belay pins. Not too hard, as long as the line doesn't foul. But you need to do it in a controlled manner.

“All hands aft to furl mainsail”.

Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.

To furl the main, you get a bunch of people up standing on the boom and leaning over the gaff. The other half of the crew push the sail up to the guys on the boom and they fold it under itself. I guess this is the fist and furl stuff they talk about in Master and Commander. Anyway, after learning that we were supposed to be up on the boom, I wasn't going to be left on the deck. Why? Not sure, just a challenge. And I used to be good at climbing trees. Besides, everyone else is doing it. Turns out there are a lot of handholds. Lines and such, so I could get myself up just fine. Then it is just a few minutes to tuck the sail into itself and get the securing lines tight. Then I have to get down. I go pretty slowly getting down. Because the crew gets pissed if you step through the window glass. Of course, it probably freaks them out must having a old fat guy up on the boom. Hey, it was fun, though I certainly wasn't impressing any young women.

Now that the sails are all down and furled, the weather isn't quite so scarry. It is still windy and blowing and the rain is cold, but we are under control and roll into our little port in good form.

Oh, that was EXACTLY the right amount of excitement.

Later it quit raining and we were gifted with a truly magnificent sunset. I was in the chart house having a beer when 2 of my friends called me up on deck. There was Mount Baker in all of her glory. The setting sun was light up the moutain from above the local cloud cover. So we had the infinite horizontal dark of the ocean below, and the dark storm horizon of the sky above, perfectly framing the Snow and Rock sunlight beauty of the mountains.