Read Online A Sail of Two Idiots by Renee Petrillo - Free Book Online
Authors: Renee Petrillo
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8, 2006: Off we go! Onto a sandbar. I kid you not. We got about 10 minutes from where we were anchored and came to a sudden halt. Oops! How incredibly embarrassing!! Didnât we have charts? Well, not exactly. Note the name of this book (instances like these are where blonde jokes come from). We had charts from the Bahamas down the Caribbean chain. Charts are expensive. We didnât want to buy charts of Florida; we were leaving Florida with no plans to come back. So we figured that once we got past Miami and into the ocean, weâd be home free. We also ASSumed that the captain would either have charts or know the area. Nope. Okay, then, we were counting on the chartplotter. Here comes another lesson.
LESSON 19: IS IT YOU? Probably. Chartplotters are only as good as the people who use them. Ours was a tiny Raymarine that I could barely get my bearings on and was set with the north arrow up instead of Course Up. If I was going south, it looked as though I was going north, and I had to maneuver as if looking at a mirror (doing the opposite of what I thought I should do). I got very confused and had taken us on the opposite side of where we should have beenâhence the sandbar. Had I looked up (and hadnât been hyperventilating about taking the wheel for the first time), I likely would have noticed the different-color waters, and maybe even a buoy.
Once we were under way again, I remedied this by changing to the Course Up option, adding more waypoints (route markers provided by paper charts and/or marine books that you add to your chartplotter), and looking up more often.
Where was the captain, you ask? Standing right there. Although Captain Tim was a really nice guy, he didnât know the area well and he eschewed all electronics (other than his basic handheld GPS), so he didnât understand the chartplotter to help me with it. Alrighty then.
We waited a few minutes for the tide to come back in (luck was on our side here) and for a motorboatâs wake to kick us off, and then we were off for real this time!
Tacking
Wahoo! We had 3- to 4-foot seas with about 20 knots of wind. This would have been great except that the waves were on the nose (dead-on, in our face, right in the direction we were trying to go). Typically, when the winds are coming directly at you, so are the waves. Such conditions can be choppy and very wet. It also means you canât sail a straight line. We had a choice to tack or motorsail, and we chose to do a little of each.
LESSON 20: NEPTUNE HAS A STRANGE SENSE OF HUMOR You will have conditions on the nose so often (sailing close-hauled) that youâll wonder if itâs some cruel joke by the sea gods, who always seem to know what direction youâre headed. I can see them up (or down) there laughing now as we all get sprayed in the face and tossed around for their entertainment.
Why use the engines? Well, hereâs a quick lesson on tacking. There are plenty of books to teach you the basics of sailing (such as
The Complete Sailor
). If you already know this stuff, read it anyway, because it explains why we didnât do it.
You go through the trouble of tacking when the winds are coming straight at you, which makes it impossible to fill the sails. To try to catch some wind, you zigzag. Some basics here: you have to sail at an angle to the wind. The exact angle depends on the design of your boat. A racing monohull can sail as close as 35 degrees off the wind; other boats, such as catamarans and some cruising mono-hulls, need to sail at a wider angle, say 50 to 60 degrees off the wind. Youâll zig going about 60 degrees to the west of your destination, and then zag going about 60 degrees to the east of your destination. The trick is to zig and zag at just the right times, and with just enough forward movement (the maximum allowed before you lose the wind in your sails again) so that at some point you end up at your destination. It can add up to a lot of extra miles.
LESSON 19: IS IT YOU? Probably. Chartplotters are only as good as the people who use them. Ours was a tiny Raymarine that I could barely get my bearings on and was set with the north arrow up instead of Course Up. If I was going south, it looked as though I was going north, and I had to maneuver as if looking at a mirror (doing the opposite of what I thought I should do). I got very confused and had taken us on the opposite side of where we should have beenâhence the sandbar. Had I looked up (and hadnât been hyperventilating about taking the wheel for the first time), I likely would have noticed the different-color waters, and maybe even a buoy.
Once we were under way again, I remedied this by changing to the Course Up option, adding more waypoints (route markers provided by paper charts and/or marine books that you add to your chartplotter), and looking up more often.
Where was the captain, you ask? Standing right there. Although Captain Tim was a really nice guy, he didnât know the area well and he eschewed all electronics (other than his basic handheld GPS), so he didnât understand the chartplotter to help me with it. Alrighty then.
We waited a few minutes for the tide to come back in (luck was on our side here) and for a motorboatâs wake to kick us off, and then we were off for real this time!
Tacking
Wahoo! We had 3- to 4-foot seas with about 20 knots of wind. This would have been great except that the waves were on the nose (dead-on, in our face, right in the direction we were trying to go). Typically, when the winds are coming directly at you, so are the waves. Such conditions can be choppy and very wet. It also means you canât sail a straight line. We had a choice to tack or motorsail, and we chose to do a little of each.
LESSON 20: NEPTUNE HAS A STRANGE SENSE OF HUMOR You will have conditions on the nose so often (sailing close-hauled) that youâll wonder if itâs some cruel joke by the sea gods, who always seem to know what direction youâre headed. I can see them up (or down) there laughing now as we all get sprayed in the face and tossed around for their entertainment.
Why use the engines? Well, hereâs a quick lesson on tacking. There are plenty of books to teach you the basics of sailing (such as
The Complete Sailor
). If you already know this stuff, read it anyway, because it explains why we didnât do it.
You go through the trouble of tacking when the winds are coming straight at you, which makes it impossible to fill the sails. To try to catch some wind, you zigzag. Some basics here: you have to sail at an angle to the wind. The exact angle depends on the design of your boat. A racing monohull can sail as close as 35 degrees off the wind; other boats, such as catamarans and some cruising mono-hulls, need to sail at a wider angle, say 50 to 60 degrees off the wind. Youâll zig going about 60 degrees to the west of your destination, and then zag going about 60 degrees to the east of your destination. The trick is to zig and zag at just the right times, and with just enough forward movement (the maximum allowed before you lose the wind in your sails again) so that at some point you end up at your destination. It can add up to a lot of extra miles.
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