7 minute read
Tom Cunli e
A high speed downwind race across the channel illustrates the high stakes involved when your boat jumps o a wave and starts sur ng
Stand by to broach, lads!’
So said Ed, the best helmsman on board, as we raced across the Channel en route for Deauville. A spring ebb was ripping west and the strong northwest wind was doing its best to make the big seas even more di cult. e boat was a state-ofthe-art, fractionally rigged 3/4 tonner. For the uninitiated, back in 1982 this made her 36 feet on deck with a tall, slender mast supported from a by a highly adjustable standing backstay, a pair of main runners, one of which took most of the strain at any time, and a set of checkstays. It was not the most secure of rigs and more than once I heard its type described as ‘a y-rod supported by cobwebs’. Spot-on. e crew were bunched a , using their combined weight to keep the stern down. is helped shove the deep spade rudder well into the
‘ water and, by ballasting the boat by the stern, the crew mass did its bit to stop the bows digging in with the messy results Ed was promising. We were running more or less down the wave train under single-reefed main and the ‘chicken chute’. is was the smallest of our three spinnakers, so-called because it was for heavy airs only and was said by its builders to withstand machine-gun re. e sheet was in the hands of a trimmer and a winch grinder working
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together. As we slowed at the top of a wave the sheet was eased to deliver extra li and take some weight o the helm. en, with the stern rising and the boat heeling momentarily, the weather helm came on and she began to surf. With the speed rocketing, the apparent wind clocked forward, leaving the trimmer yelling at his mate to ‘wind, wind, wind,’ with the spinnaker lu trying to break. When it icked into shape you could literally feel the boat surge forward.
So long as Ed could keep the yacht on her feet, we then enjoyed a period of sizzling exhilaration as we le ‘hull speed’ somewhere in the mists of history and blasted towards the nish line at an improbable rate of knots. is was what we were all out there for.
When I heard Ed’s unusual order, I glanced at him. He was heaving an awful lot of wheel to leeward which meant big-time weather helm applied. Inexorably, the bow started swinging to windward. ere didn’t seem much more to do except hang on, but Ed hadn’t given up yet.
‘Blow the vang!’ he barked.
I hadn’t thought of that. With the main depowered, maybe, just maybe, she’d pull back into line. One of the chaps scrambled to the jammers and dumped the vang line. e boat shuddered, the boom kicked up and the main took on an expensive look as it wrapped itself up in the lee rigging. e broach slowed, but only for a split second. Ed now had full weather helm on and the boat was going her own way. is didn’t promise to end well. Nor did it. e centrifugal force of the yacht’s 90 degree swing to windward began to throw her onto her beam ends. e rudder was well out of the water when the chicken chute cracked. As wind got onto the wrong side of it, it shook the pitifully thin mast as a terrier might shake a rat stupid enough to secure its attention. Perhaps fortunately, just before the mast hit the water, the chute blew out of its tapes. ere was a good side to this. It didn’t stop the boat going at over, but it did save the rig from being rattled to pieces and it cut the noise.
We were lucky in a sense that we’d performed what we might call the default broach - to windward. is meant that all the runners were set up tight, which gave the mast a fair chance of survival once relieved of the manic chicken chute. Had we ‘gone the wrong way’ and been carried out of control into a gybe broach, two ghastly things would have happened. First, because no preventer had been rigged, the boom would have slammed into the ‘old’ windward running backstays. With the wind as strong as it was,
ABOVE
A suitably dramatic example of broaching
damage could well have resulted. Secondly, a er the gybe, the mast would be largely unsupported from a , the old lee runners being let o , save for the nominal e orts of the lightweight standing backstay. So, broken boom and dismasting. You can see why insurers don’t love gybe broaches on yachts relying on runners to keep the mast up.
Relieved of the chute and now dead in the water, the boat came upright readily enough. A er we’d retrieved a couple of swimmers, a head count showed all present and at least breathing. ere was enough integrity in what remained of the spinnaker to retrieve the halyard, so we cleared up and pumped out. Ed proposed hoisting our heavy tri-radial spinnaker, larger and more fragile than the chicken chute, but he wasn’t paying the bills. Dissent was abroad among the ranks and one look at the swimmers said it all.
‘OK then. Number 3 genoa it is, and pole it out quick. Vang back on and let’s go racing.’
Up went the number three, thrashing and hammering as it went up the lu groove, but once it was sheeted home on the pole all was peace and away we went, almost as fast as before, under perfect control. We took some silver in Deauville
ABOVE
Stalling out when pressed in moderate conditions can only be readily achieved in modern, relatively at oored yachts
TOM CUNLIFFE
Tom has been mate on a merchant ship, run yachts for gentlemen, operated charter boats, delivered, raced and taught. He writes the pilot for the English Channel, a complete set of cruising text books and runs his own internet club for sailors worldwide at tomcunli e.com and we’d a famous night in the club. One of the swimmers was heard muttering about catching the ferry home until someone pressed the large cup we’d won into his hands. It was brimming with ‘Bolly’. He took a gulp and resigned himself to the economic and seamanlike option of a sail back to Cowes in the morning.
I’m working right now on a little book about heavy weather cruising. As you’d expect, it’s full of tips about how to deal with the sort of conditions we’d all rather avoid, but scenes such as I experienced with Ed and the boys hardly get a mention. is is because the recommendation for a yacht that’s cruising with a typical small crew is to keep her speed down when running before a gale. She doesn’t want to be going so slowly that she doesn’t have proper control, but, sure as Christmas, she doesn’t want to be sur ng for long periods either. A happy medium is to nd a speed comfortably within the boat’s theoretical maximum. A 32-footer might plump for ve or six knots. at gives the helm plenty to bite on but is unlikely to lead to potentially disastrous broaching.
So much for running. What’s more interesting on the subject of boats taking over from the helmsman is a phenomenon that’s relatively recent. Here’s what happens.
I was lming a video lately in Southampton Water. e crew and I had been loaned an expensive high-performance cruiser for the day. As we sailed north, a minor gust hit us. e extra wind amounted to no more than force ve and we had full sail up on a close reach. I gave the huge wheel a spoke or two of weather helm to help her through it, but she started rounding up. I gave her more. No result. In the end, I gave her the beans. Helm against the stop, and this 45-foot yacht broached and ended up head-to-wind. I’d made no attempt to dump the mainsheet although this might have put us back on track, but the jammer was out of my reach and, anyway, who is going to turn out the watch on a dark night to ease the main every time the wind pu s up a bit? I’m afraid this just won’t do. Such behaviour was unheard of until at- oored yachts began appearing. Of course we all know about balancing the rig and the rest, but you can’t always do that on watch alone at sea, so if you have a yacht that deals you a dirty hand when the wind blows, get it sold now and buy one that has sweet manners a er test-sailing it on a windy day. I promise, you won’t be sorry and you won’t sail much slower either.
