Pump and Gybe...

[khiemtran]

Thursday night sailing and I'm just setting off from the beach behind the sailing club...

There's a family playing at the edge of the water and a small girl, about three, asks "What is that man doing?"

"He's launching a boat," her father tells her.

But there's a bit of trick to launching with an easterly like we have tonight. Because the beach is on the lee of the sailing club, the steady ten knot wind is transformed into a light onshore zephyr. If I'm not careful, I'll never leave the shadow of the club and get pushed helplessly back onto the short (or even worse, into the pylons of the club jetty).

I walk my boat out into the shallows, check everything is order, then jump on-board, trying to set off with as much momentum as possible. Sure, enough, the wind is next to useless, and before long I'm drifting back towards the club. A vision flashes before me of the small girl asking "Daddy, why is that man getting out of the boat again?" But, I still have one secret weapon. I can pump the sails.

Standing up, I put one foot on the leeward rail and heel the boat, letting the boom swing out across the water. Stepping back again, I pull on the mainsheet, holding the tiller straight as the sail comes back like a great fan. We've barely moved. I put my foot back on the rail and repeat the process. Did we move a little? We seem to be drifting vaguely towards the club. A third pump and - yes! - we're definitively moving!

Bit by bit we pick up momentum, still going very slowly, but at least in a forwards direction. At last the jib starts flapping in the breeze and the boat starts moving forwards of its own accord. Once we're out of the lee of the sailing club, I can pull trim the sails, get the centreboard down and fix the rudder, and then I'm off across the bay, inordinately chuffed that I managed to get off the beach without disillusioning a three year old spectator...

Out on the water, it's a great evening for a gentle sail - a nice steady breeze, a blue sea, and low waves. After a couple of reaches and tacks to find my rhythm, I beat upwind then bear away to practise my gybes.

Most people can probably understand the concept of a "tack". A sailing boat can move in any direction except directly into the wind, leaving a "no-go zone" of around forty-five degrees on each side of the apparent wind. A tack is where you turn from a course on one side of the no-go zone to a course on the other, which will let you zig-zag your way upwind.

A "gybe", on the other hand, is a turn in the other direction. You're heading away from the wind with the wind on one side of the boat and turning until it comes from the other side of the boat. The catch here is that while, in a tack, the sails are depowered when you cross the no-go zone, here they will go from fully powered on one side to fully powered on the other. This means the boom can swing across quite quickly and if you're not ready for it, it can be quite dangerous.

I've had a few tips on gybing better and tonight I'm going to put them into practice. In the light, steady wind, I gybe again and again, concentrating first on being balanced before the gybe, and then on being balanced all the way through. There's a point just before the boom wants to swing across where you can see the leech, the back of the sail start to curl. You can feel the mainsheets start to loosen, especially if you're heeled to windward. That's the moment when you can grab the sheets and pull the boom across, maybe it swing when you're ready and not when it feels like it. Taken early, the gybe is not as violent, and, if you can stay balanced all the way through, a gybe is a thing of beauty. There's nothing like the feeling of standing erect in a balanced boat after the boom has shot over and the boat has changed to a new course. (Although, of course, the stronger the wind, the harder it becomes to stay balanced and I did have a light wind and reefed sail.)

At last, after gybing and gybing and gybing, I "heave to", turning the boat into the wind, letting out the mainsail and setting the jib against the rudder so the two of them try to turn the boat in different directions and cancel each other out. Once hove-to, the boat will drift with the tide and I can flop on the floor and take some photos, and soak up the glorious evening.

Comments

[carl-allery.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a nice evening's sail. Congratulations on gettng off shore against the wind - always a tough one. I'm not too fond of gybing and will haul in the mainsail as tight as possible before turning across the wind. :)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I used to sheet in until the boom was just at the edge of the boat, but now I'm only just getting it off the shrouds. The difference seems to be the boat was much less stable before the gybe (since it was trying to luff up and I had to pull quite hard to keep the sail in), which lead to other problems down the line. Now, I'm trying to concentrate on keep my balance all the way through and making sure I come out of the gybe smoothly. Of course, it's easy to do in ten knots with a reefed sail... I've had two capsizes during gybes so far and both of them were on windier days.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I continue to learn. (And then probably forget in a week or two. ;^b )

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Have you thought of trying sailing? It's a great sport for geeks...

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

livredor tried to talk me into it once, but I doubt it's for me: I get travel sick easily. But perhaps it's like driving, where being in control ameliorates that considerably...?

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I think with a dinghy it's more that there's so little boat to disrupt the view that you get a lot of visual cues to predict how the boat's going to move. (Normal advice is to go above deck if you're feeling sick, but with a sailing dinghy there isn't even a deck to be below.) Plus, if there's any sort of swell, chances are you won't be out there...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

When you started sailing, was it with an instructor? It must have been, right? Did you first shadow someone, and then do it with someone watching, and then on your own--like that?

I find I can understand the concepts when I'm reading (though I forget what the bits of terminology are, so sometimes *that* element is confusing), but then they slip out of my mind. But doing it, hands on, would surely help to fasten them in there. . .

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes, I started out with an instructor in the boat; then an instructor following in a rib (rigid inflatable boat); then, after the RYA level 1 course (around twelve hours in total), it was pretty much "here's your boat, be back before it gets dark". I've done an RYA level 2 course since then, which had two of us in a boat while the instructor watched us from a rib.