The Picaroon Blog

Byline: Pip

The benefit of all our divers engine malfunctions is that we have been forced to really sail all year. Every time we go out, we are learning something new about how to handle the boat in close quarters, or in light air, or maneuvering in and out of our dock. This is a Good Thing, and we are now quite comfortable sailing into and out of our slip at the marina (another reason we love our marina - most wouldn't let us do that, for reasons that should be apparent by the end of this post).

That said, it doesn't mean that things don't still go pear-shaped once in a while.

Yesterday, we were faced with a new situation: a decent breeze was coming from dead ahead of the boat as we sat in the dock. If you know the rudiments of sailing theory, you know that sailboats cannot sail straight into the wind. Our plan was to let go the docklines, and then push ourselves clear of the pilings and then fall off the wind and, er, sail away. Or something like that.

In the event, the letting go of the docklines and the pushing clear of the pilings went smoothly. Once clear of the dock, I pulled the tiller to port, and the boat started turn gently into what should have been a nice port tack.

What actually happened was that the wind followed us around, which it likes to do at such opportune times, so instead of sailing off into open water, we were drifting slowly astern with no steerage way.

I decided, for some reason that remains a mystery, to try and gybe around. There was not enough room to do this.

What there was enough room to do was sail at gathering speed straight back towards the dock, and the other--more expensive--boats parked there. And so this was what we did.

With the wind on our quarter, there was no way of depowering the mainsail, so I did the only thing possible (notwithstanding crashing into someone else's boat) and steered us back into the dock, head on, at about five or six knots.

Fortunately, there were four of us on board, and with everyone desperately grabbing bits of line and dock and heaving for all we were worth, we managed to haul three tonnes of speeding boat to a halt before--miraculously--it hit anything.

The moral of this tale is: don't sail with us, or near us, because we are completely incompetent.