Friday, December 26
Karen and Martin joined us on Braesail at noon after they’d enjoyed a morning visit with a friend, and we set sail shortly after noon for the marina of the North Saanich Yacht Club in Blue Heron Basin in Tseum Harbour near Sidney BC on chilly morning. After some choppiness, the water settled into a more coherent wave pattern as the wind rose over the boat’s port stern quarter. As eager and skilled sailors, Walt and Martin were thrilled to sail swiftly and comfortably in the stiff breeze, adjusting the main and jib sails as needed to maintain optimum sailing efficiency despite variable wind speeds, and Karen and I were very happy passengers as the boat glided quietly over the water.
Sometime after about 2 pm, Martin made open-faced cheese sandwiches below decks in the galley and was handing them up to those in the warm, enclosed cockpit when the wind suddenly increased in speed from around 20 kts to 30, the gust grabbed the line attached to the jib (the huge sail at the front of the boat) on the port side of the boat, pulled it off the winch around which it had been wrapped, whipped it into the line on the boat’s starboard side, and proceeded to twist the two lines into a huge knot! The boat had been heeled over to starboard, and now tipped even more sharply, sending various objects, including the small artificial Christmas tree I’d put on the floor in a corner of the main cabin’s settee, and the microwave fastened in a niche above the galley sink, pitching out onto the boat’s floor (no damage was done, but the noise generated by the tumbling microwave was considerable!).
Walt turned Braesail into the wind as quickly as he could to halt its forward motion, as the snapping/flapping of the sails, the jerking of the boom (the heavy beam attached to the mast to which the mainsail is fastened), and the vibrating of the mast’s rigging increased, and Martin struggled to furl the mainsail into the mast and to wind the jib onto the forestay in the bow as far as he could with its lines knotted. While he was doing this, our heavy power winch-grinder’s battery went dead, our smaller power grinder was not up to the task at hand, and Martin had to use a manual winch handle to crank the winches around and wind up the lines attached to the sails (a great upper-body work-out!). While Walt controlled the boat in the water, Martin attached a fresh battery to the power winch-grinder and finished furling the sails; Karen and I remained on stand-by in the cockpit to help with any tasks. Martin attached his safety line to the boat’s outside rails and went out on the foredeck to see if he could untangle the lines, but the task was impossible given the shifting wind conditions, so Walt started the engine and we motored to our destination in Tseum Harbour in decreasing winds. Walt spent some of his time at the helm looking carefully at the knotted jib “sheets” (the lines), and while I took the helm for a time, he and Martin managed to untangle the jumble. Before we’d arrived at the marina at around 3 pm, the lines and sails had been wound up neatly, and all was well!
Since it was “Boxing Day” in Canada, no one was at the largely unoccupied guest dock, but we had no trouble mooring Braesail. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the main cabin and enjoying an early supper of tasty left-overs, followed by more visiting over mochi ice cream balls made by Karen, Nanaimo bars, and slices of the fantastic panettone that Walt had made (it was filled with dried cherries and with the candied orange and citron peels that he’d produced himself!)–what a great sail and exciting “adventure” we’d had!
By 6:30, it was time for Karen and Martin to leave, with their gifts (including many cookies!) and belongings in tow, to catch a bus to the 8 pm ferry to the Vancouver area.
After our good-bye hugs, Walt and I did some galley clean-up, some minor adjusting of the boat’s refrigeration system, some reading and writing, and some DuoLingo German exercises before collapsing into bed. “Boxing” the rambunctious wind had been a challenging game!
Braesail - A grand yacht in the Salish Sea 