Heel More!

Friends of the Manhattan Sailing School will recognize the bulkhead behind us. I originally was planning to adopt an echte Shaolin sailing pose, but as you can see I came out looking slightly drunk and crazed.

This week’s novitiates included Giancarlo, Dorothy (“let’s go faster!”) and Konstanze.

Saturday’s sail training was actually rather challenging at times, with wind holding steady at 20 knots (measured at Robbins Reef) and gusting up to 30 occasionally. Which brings me to my point, one well worth repeating:

The time to shorten sail is when you first think of it.

This is especially true in a sail training environment, where the comfort levels of your crew might range wildly. For example, we had one sailor who was as new as morning dew to the sport. On the other hand, we had a former dinghy racer. (Guess whom was more conservative!)

As usual, Man Overboard recoveries dominated Sunday’s morning sail. We executed 11 recoveries from start to finish and shot no fewer than 16 approaches.

Along the way, we also discovered that Giancarlo is a man of great modesty and a tireless defender of our waterways. We picked up all sorts of extraneous garbage from the water, including a balloon. If you don’t know this already, balloons are actually a great threat to marine life, particularly to sea turtles. They resemble jellyfish, and the unwary sea turtle that swallows one will wind up with a fatal intestinal obstruction, unable to dive or eat. It’s a horrible way to die, and my great thanks to Giancarlo for helping to keep our waters safe.

Cheers to a great group, and a great weekend!

Julian

A superhero team for the 21st century

Freshly baptized by the spirit of Henry Hudson, the victorious crew of the Swordfish pauses for reflection. From left to right: Julian, Matt (“Heel more!”), Cousin Mike (don’t cross, because he can make your server cry Uncle), Jennifer (the most dangerous among us, she has her own intern), and Rob (who has the coolest check blazer). With a description like this, you’d think we were ready for burning highrises and cosmic monsters. Even better, these are the newly-certified keelboat sailors from the Manhattan Sailing School…

The weekend turned out to be pretty blustery. Saturday afternoon the wind, which had been piping along at a breezy 15 knots, gusted up to 25 and beyond. As we’ve no reef in our main, we elected to dump the jib and sail under main alone. That gave a pretty stark example of what weather helm looks like on a J-24. Like a schooner, she constantly wanted to rear up and point every time a gust came along. It took a pretty stiff counter pull on the tiller to keep her humming along on course, and hum she did. I’d say we spent a good deal of that afternoon heeled at 20 degrees.

Gybing in that kind of wind is no joke. One of the things I discovered is that you really must start the sheets in order to fall off. In lighter wind, a J is content to fall off into a gybe no matter what her point of sail. In fresh winds, however, she really does need to have  her main eased to get that gybe going. Then you have to pull, uh, like, quick! to get everything in nice and tight.

I’m a big proponent of gybing. It’s faster than tacking and many times it might be your only option if denial led you to get a lot closer to that other boat than you’d like to be.

So: cheap insurance is teaching your crew to gybe in all the kinds of wind that you sail in. There’s no substitute for being prepared. Teach your crew and your crew will learn and respond. The alternative is getting your crew used to “lazy” sailing habits and when push comes to shove and you need to manoeuvre, you’ll wind up as someone else’s headline.

See you on the water,

Julian

Coming about!

Just in case you were wondering…a schooner’s a particular animal. Specifically, it’s a weatherly rig, which means, ceteris paribus, that it woud like nothing better than to become the world’s most expensive weather vane. Yes, dear sailors, left to her own devices (sheets left all slack), the schooner will snap up into irons with the proverbial quickness.

So, for those of you wondering…

Especially in light air, we’ll “weather”, i.e., haul in, the mainsail when we’re coming about. The particular design of Pioneer means that, all things equal, a hauled–in main will tend to snap us to weather, her mainsail’s center of effort being abaft our centre of lateral resistance.

All this is fine and dandy. If, however, you get overzealous on that foresail and try to haul it in, you’ll actually increase our lee helm and actually slow our tack.

So, today’s take home lesson is: do not trim the foresail in a tack, in any kind of wind.

See you on the water!

Julian

Incoming students

Hello all,

Thanks for tuning in for my inaugural post. Sailing’s been on my mind as I just spent four days away from it in lovely Cape Cod, home of my fiance’s family. Oddly enough, when I’m up there we never get out on the water, except for that one time, which we’d rather not talk about with certain family members.

Anyway, the latest class of inductees (that’s you, class #B5) will be up this weekend starting Friday. Here are a couple of pointers:

1. Bring a rested body with lots of sleep. We are going to overload, overload, overload you and we only have two and a half days to do it.

2. You’re going to mess up. Our program pretty much teaches you what a 14 year old would learn over the course of a summer’s sailing. Relax and don’t worry; our job as instructors is to make sure that no matter how you mess up everyone aboard will be safe.

3. Study the quiz. Study the quiz. Do you really think we’d send you into a 130-question theoretical examination of your abilities without adequate preparation? Study the quiz!

4. Bring a set of “foulies” to keep your top and bottoms dry. Lightweight, rain-proof “camping” pants are ok, as long as they stay up and don’t restrict your mobility.

5. Sunscreen, and gobs of it. Even an overcast day can have a high UV rating and we don’t want y’all being crispy critters out there.

6. Don’t plan any blow-out benders with friends Saturday evening. You’ll be exhausted, and still have some book study to do in order to prepare for Sunday’s practical exam.

This page will grow over time, but for now, I’m glad you’re aboard!

See you on the water,

Julian