About a month ago, I was out sailing on the Columbia river, which has
become my defacto cruising ground for the Portland area. The stretch
of river frequented by sailors is "between the bridges", in that it is between
the I-5 and I-205 bridges, about 2-3 miles of river with approximately
.5 mile of river width. The prevailing winds on this stretch of river
are almost always from the West, making it possible to run up river
and beat back down to the ramp.
It was a great day, and I was enjoying the 5-10 knot breeze as I
slowly crawled up the river, receiving the usual bemused hellos from
the much larger sailing craft around me. After about 1 hour of sailing,
I noticed something that should have been a warning to me: My fore stay
seemed very slack. Now I have seen the shrouds go slack on the lee
side of the boat while reaching, so I figured that since I was running
wing-a-wing, I must be putting a great deal of stress on the mast and
rigging, and the fore stay would pop back as soon as I began to reach
down the river.
I decided to head on down the river, and brought the boat about and
sheeted in the sails. At this point, I realized that my slack fore stay was
not a function of the rigging stress ... It had detachted! Visions of the
mast tumbling down on me appeared in my mind in a flash. I think If
I had thought about it a little, I might have been a little calmer, but I
did the first thing that came to mind ... DROP SAIL. I popped the
main down and let it crumple into the cockpit as I scampered up
on deck to drop the jib. Now it should have occured to me at this
point that the jib was the only thing holding up the mast, as the halyard
was now my fore stay! As I uncleated the jib halyard, I did realize that
fact, and it was driven home by the fact that my mast was now teetering
precariously in my hand. Using my hand to hold up the mast, all the
while laughing hysterically, I managed to pop open the jib halyard
snap shackle and attach it to the pulpit. Picture me on the deck of
my P-15, holding the bitter end of the halyard with a single turn on the
cleat, trying to wrassle the halyard onto the pulpit. I got it secured, and
cleated the halyard, thus ending the immanent crash of my mast onto the me
and the fore deck. The whole time this is going on, of course, the boat is
heaving up and down in the wakes of power boats and barges on this
rather busy river!
Once the mast was secured, I looked down, and too my surprise, sitting inocently
by the toe rail was the SS pin for my fore stay shackel. I snatched it, jumped
back into the cockpit and grabbed my pliers out of my engine tool kit. Thank
god for those babys! I re-attached the fore stay and reefed down on the pin
insuring that I would not undergo that exercise agian, at least not that day.
I got back into the cockpit and tried to get my heart out of my throat. I looked
around me and realized that there was no reason not to raise sail and continue
on where I left off. I raised both sails, but had spun sufficiently around that I
was accidentally backwinding the jib. A sudden realization came over me ...
I had finally "heaved-to" in my boat. The feeling was great. I had tried to
heave-to before, but had always had too much speed through my tack and ended
up overshooting the small window of balance to get her to heave. I saw
now the beauty of this maneuver: I could stop the boat dead ( virtually) with the
sails fully powered. I began to experiment a little, and found that by popping the
windward sheet and bringing the jib back around I would immeadiatly begin
surging forward. Backwind the jib and throw the helm to lee, and I would
again come to a full stop.
I spent the rest of this glorious day going in circles on the river, testing out
my new found ability. It turned out to be a great confidence builder and
another great day of sailing.
Hope you enjoyed my story ...
Derek Jensen
P-15 #694 "El-Nino"
Portland, OR