Mike's Adventures in Sailing

Very similar to adventures in babysitting, but less dangerous.

Story 1: So, yachts have something called a keel which weights the boat down in the water and allows it to lean over from side to side without capsizing.  The keel on the bottom of Waltzing (the boat I work on) is 2m below the waterline.  We have several instruments that should be used for the prevention of the keel resting on the bottom.  However, these need to be calibrated right.

The famous Whitehaven beach (http://www.photozone.de/pictures/australia/a8.jpg) is inaccessible from the direct beach front access.  I say it's because they don't want the horizon dotted with yachts and charter boats. So we have to approach from the bay behind it called Tongue Bay.  Whitehaven is an essential part to every trip we do, rated one of the top 10 beaches in the world, accessible only by boat.  So this is an attraction that all of our passengers really want to see.  However, we need to tuck in close to the land contour of Whitsunday island to avoid the 'rolls' of the swells.

So, as we were eating lunch the other day the skipper calls me upstairs to haul up the anchor because we notice that the depth sounder is reading 2.5m, so as long as we move quickly we should barely make it, if the depth sounder was calibrated right.

Now, I've had a car stuck in snow, in mud and have been able to push them out.  To have a 40-tonne boat stuck in sand, that's another story.  I don't care how hard you kick, there is no way it was moving.  So we were stuck from low tide at 12:30 until tide started coming up again at 5:00pm.  What an exciting day!

This was the second trip in a row with some adventure.  The trip before this probably contains the scariest moment of my life.  Now you need some sailing knowledge that will give you a complete picture of this story.

Mom and Dad, this is a disclaimer, you may want to stop reading now.  Everything is fine, you have spoken to me several times since then, and no I'm not going to leave this job.

A stay is something that keeps the mast mounted on the deck.  The fore stay is the mount for the head sail that is rolled out from the bow of the boat (which I'm sure you have deduced as Smiley did so shrewdly).  These stays are generally 1-1.5 inch thick steel cables and can withstand enough pressure and force from the sail to use the wind to move this 40-tonne boat along the water at speed of ~7kts.

Last Monday on our way in, the winds were so great that the fore stay sheared through its mounting bracket and whipped around the deck.  Now here comes the problem, the stay is mounted at the bow and at the top of the main mast, about 15m up in the air.  And in big winds and big seas, getting up there to disconnect it was not an option.  I don't think this would have been a viable option regardless, because that would have allowed this steel cable to go whipping off uncontrollably.  So, our only option is to figure out a way to lash it to the deck.  We get the passengers out of harms way, find someone that can steer the boat while the skipper and I have to deal with the situation.  We have to control this steel whip with a full sail dragging the mass of the boat all over the place.  We put our full body weight on the stay and it drags us across the bow 4 times, threatening to send us overboard.  At this point I enter into real emergency mode, which for some reason to me is to calm down and really start to think things through, no panic.  The skipper and I start to talk and come up with a manageable plan.  We need to lash the fore stay to the anchor mount and then pull the sail down.  However, the winds are up around 35kts and the seas are at 4m in places and we are getting smashed about by the winds, the sea, and the fore stay.  We instruct the 'helmsman' to steer us head first into the wind so the sail is somewhat controllable.  And we manage to get it lashed to the deck and finally get the sail down after it has been torn to shreds.  This ordeal lasts for about 2 hours and by the end of it we are just completely exhausted, adrenalin is the only thing that allowed us to deal with the situation.  Everyone is okay, skipper and I are just bleeding from little cuts and pretty badly bruised, and soaked through.  I have no doubt had the seas been any colder we would have been at serious risk of hypothermia.

But, everything is fine and managing in this emergency has somehow been a test for me on the boat.  The skipper is giving me much more responsibility and is teaching me the subtle ways of the ocean.  So I guess it was a good thing?