Surprise's Log Day Sailer 11750

Storm on Wednesday night

I've been terribly remiss in making reports here. Part of it is due to my schoolwork; part is due to the fact I'd like to provide something more interesting. More on that soon, I hope.

Yesterday we had the first abandonment after a start that I've been part of in my years of participation in the CLRA Wednesday night races.

It was unexpected, because when I arrived at the dock early to put the boat together, the weather was fine. It was sunny, with winds from ESE at 10-12kts. Cumulus clouds. Perfect weather.

I had Surprise fully rigged and ready to go by the time Joe arrived. We passed comments back and forth about the excellence of the weather. Having placed Surprise in the water, we hoisted sail and sailed toward the race area on the eastern end of Clear Lake. As we progressed towards the Seabrook Beach Club, we noticed the Northwestern sky growing cloudy and ominous.
"Never mind.” I said. "We've seen this before, It will likely pass to the north, and maybe steal the wind at worst. "But," I added, "Let's keep an eye on it. If it gets nasty, we can always run to shore and get in a cove somewhere."

We sailed around for a while, eyeing the storms to the north and west.
"Perhaps we will get a race off today,” said Joe. I agreed with him. I almost said, "Of course we will." But probably due to the immediacy of sailing, that is, you live in the now, and the very near future, (read: the next event - the start, a mark rounding, a wind shift ) I didn't verbalize it.

The RC set up the course, and we began our passes near the line to get an idea of what to expect. The usual stuff: A 30 second line, although the port tack was definitely going to be the long tack.
We watched as each fleet before us started: the Non-Spinnaker keelboats, the Star Class, the Sunfish. Then our class flag came up with the course flag beneath. Course 2: a six leg windward-leeward course, with the last leg altered somewhat to bring us close to the Seabrook Beach Club for our finish.

Having had several near collisions with other boats before the start, we spent a lot of time away from the line. After our three-minute warning flag went up, we got near and lined up for a boat end, starboard start, with the intention to tack to port soon after the start.

As we approached the line, we realized we were going to be late. The wind speed and angle had been jumping up and down and we had misjudged the time needed to get to the line. The rest of the fleet seemed to have made this error also, but perhaps to a lesser extent. We assumed a close-hauled course on starboard and found ourselves being lifted up by one of the Vanguard-15's. He had apparently intended to tack and didn’t realize we were there. I brought Surprise into the wind but didn't keep her going. We lost headway and couldn't complete the tack. I pulled the rudder to me to try to get her moving again on starboard. She responded slowly and when we had a couple of knots of speed we tacked and put her on the long port tack towards the mark.

As we hiked out hard and got her trimmed for the upwind leg, I noticed the great gray looming clouds ahead of us. The storm appeared to have taken a hard right hand turn and was bearing down on Clear Lake. The wind had picked up some and we were both hiking out hard to keep the boat flat. A Vanguard-15 was ahead of us on our starboard bow, but we were able to maintain our speed and even point a little higher than him.

The clouds ahead of us became a dark ceiling, with the sunlit horizon beneath. "Were they coming towards us?" I asked myself. Aloud, I said to Joe "Let's decide on using the kite after we round the mark. I'm not sure about this."

The lake got darker and more ominous. Our angle to the mark, for which had been fairly small, almost a fetch was beginning to widen. We needed to think about tacking, but the time didn't seem right to me. If we tacked, we would be sailing at an angle of greater than 45 degrees off the bow. As a rule of thumb this was a bad thing.

Suddenly, the air temperature dropped 15 degrees. The hair on the back of my neck rose.

"Oh, Shit." I said. "We're in trouble."

And just after I said this, the dreaded downdraft reached Surprise. She heeled hard over to starboard. Joe and I hiked as hard as we could, and I immediately eased the mainsail and tried to point her up into the wind to maintain some sort of stable equilibrium between flogging her sails to death and capsizing. Suddenly I saw a Sunfish ahead of us on Starboard tack. We would collide if I didn't do something. I began to ease the boat downwind.
"Shouldn't we tack?" I heard in my ear.
I continued to focus on missing the Sunfish and keeping Surprise from flipping over in the murky shallow muck of the lake. That was paramount in my mind from the moment the downdraft hit us. Do not capsize. Do anything else short of losing the boat to avoid capsizing.

We were around the Sunfish, my head missing their boom by a few inches.
"We should tack!" shouted Joe above the 25kt wind howling in my ears.
No. It would not do. There was no way to do this. If I had enough way on, it was likely we would trip over our centerboard after the tack.

The northern shore of Clear Lake, at Waterford Harbour - the richest spot on the lake, complete with concrete bulkheads was coming close.

"We need to tack!" shouted Joe again.
"Hell", I thought, and said, "We can't tack. This race is over for us!”
A 30kt gust hit us, and Surprise heeled over and took water over her starboard gunwale. The main was flogging. Only the jib was drawing. Joe eased the jib and the boat righted herself.
“We'll bring her alongside the shore and get the sails down. Get the painter out!" I said after the wind eased off.

The rough, artificial, concrete, expensive, hard shore of Waterford Harbour loomed ahead of us. Was there enough depth? What if there were huge rocks just off the shore? The tide was high, and Surprise only draws 3'9". Would there be enough depth? I asked myself again.
No way to tell. We had only one option. Get to shore. I pointed the bow into the wind as we came alongside and Joe jumped onto the concrete bulkhead.

I went forward and released the jib. Joe brought it down onto the deck.
I released the main halyard and fumbled with getting it off the magic box hook. I finally managed to release it and stood up to pull the mainsail down. It was stuck. I glanced down and saw the snarl of lines at the base of the mast where the main halyard exited. Again, I fumbled with the line, pulling and cursing.
"Dammit!" I swore, fumbling with the snarled main halyard. I thought I could heard Surprise's hull grinding on the concrete bulkhead. Finally I managed to get the mainsail down and I sprang from the cockpit ashore.

The next 20 minutes seemed to pass slowly for me. We fended the boat off the concrete bulkhead as best we could. Occasionally, three foot seas would run down the bulkhead, slamming Surprise up and down. Holding the starboard shroud proved only partially effective. The stern of the boat would on occasion swing in and scrape on the bulkhead. Several times we were obliged to let her move aft with the waves, and we simply tried to keep ourselves from being smashed between the boat and the bulkhead.

We looked out onto the lake and saw the entire Wednesday night fleet scattered. Of the Portsmouth Fleet, two Vanguard-15s and the 470 were capsized; a Star was running for her dock under jib alone. Then, 470 was being pulled upright by a powerboat. In the middle of it all was the Race Committee Boat, lending assistance. We saw one of the Vanguards come upright with black muck on her mainsail. The jib appeared to be in tatters.

"I hope Jim is alright." I said, thinking of the other Day Sailer in the fleet. "Do you see him?"
"No. He was to our right and I saw him bearing off before the storm hit us.” said Joe.

I began to think of the next step in our plan to get home. If the wind moderated, we could probably push off and raise the sails to get home. But we were on a bit of a lee shore. It wasn't a full-on, break-your-boat-into-fibers lee shore, but the wave action tended to push the boat into the bulkhead and we had to keep fighting to keep the boat from being crunched against the dock.

Slowly the fleet disappeared from the lake. The Race Committee boat hove into earshot and we passed her our towline to pull us off. Joe was onboard Surprise, having tended to the task of getting the towline around the mast to keep the strain off the bow eye. I had been fighting to keep the boats stern from scraping in the concrete, and I heard the call "Get aboard, Gentlemen!" from forward. I placed my feet into the cockpit near the stern, and jumped in, hoping the boat wouldn't be badly affected by the sudden introduction of my weight so far outboard. I scrambled as close to the center as I could with the mainsail down and the boom on deck. I took the helm, steadied myself and stood up.

The RC boat was towing us, her bow facing us, with their engines running astern.
"Is your boat alright? Do you want a tow home?"

I managed through my adrenaline-addled brain to say that if they would tow us a couple of hundred yards into the lake, we would raise our sails and go home.

Slowly they pulled us out, and finally the concrete nightmare was far enough away to no longer be a considerable threat. We hoisted the main, cast off from the RC boat, and I put the helm to starboard, setting us on a run towards the Clear Lake dock.

After a few minutes, we hoisted the jib, and made good way towards our dock. Ahead, it still looked as if there was the threat of lightning. I glanced to port and saw Jim's Day Sailer at a dock in Glen Cove. He was hoisting his main and appeared to be in good shape. "There's Jim,” I said. "Looks like he's OK. I think we are, too." I rapped Surprise's wooden thwart with my knuckles. We weren't home, yet.

"At the risk of sounding too Royal Navy, I think we should splice the Main Brace," I said.

"Let me finish getting these lines squared away and we'll do it," said Joe.

Although the cold Tecate went down my throat gratefully, I was not at all at ease. The clouds were still ominous, although they were no longer black and looming. I kept my eyes on the masthead and felt the wind on my neck. An accidental jibe at this point could be catastrophic. Joe tended the jib, keeping it drawing as well as he could. Nevertheless, it flapped occasionally, being blanketed by the main. "Should I set the jib on a whisker pole?" I asked myself. "No. It's fine as it is. Let's just get back to the dock."

We were able to stay on starboard tack, and made it back to the dock with no incident, although the boat was often surfing down the waves left over from the storm.

We rounded to in the lee of the dock and took the sails down. Jim followed us in a few minutes later.

At the dock, we saw Paul who was sailing solo in his Flying Junior. He had been able to round the weather mark, but feared he had lost about two years of lifetime in his sails as a result of flogging them to keep his boat upright was already at the dock. We were amazed he was able to stay upright through all of this.

We got the boats out of the water, and derigged them, glad that no one was hurt, and that all our boats were able to sail again next week.