In many ways the construction of my boat is nearing the end--though there is plenty more to share here. Still, even with the boat built, there's much more to be learned...sometimes in ways that I'd rather not.
One of the goals of the plan drift that I imposed on the Teal was to make it easier to recover from the inevitable capsize. All boats can capsize, just that some are much easier than others. The Teal is considered a fairly "tender" design, which means that it will let you know the wind is at it and, if you ignore that, let all the water from the outside in. Blub, blub.
Well, while I was able to do some sailing this year, singlehanding was being strangely elusive (people seem to like riding in my boat). Today (yes, a column written the day of the event!) the wind forecast looked good, with winds running about 10-15 mph and temps in the low 80's, pretty much gorgeous. So, with the help of my son, I loaded up the boat and went out to Frenchtown Pond State Park.
There were a lot of people at the park, and I was using my old sail. which I has partially unrigged. I launched after putting things together, navigated around all the kids crowding the dock and got far enough out to run up the sail. About that time I realized I hadn't rigged things precisely correctly, so some fumbling about resolved that problem and I was off.
Frenchtown Pond is small, a measely 52 acre gravel pit that flooded. In some ways that's a good thing, as it makes you have to think about your sailing, and also practice tacking, a lot. The wind was blowing strong out of the northwest (it seemed and I could put on great bursts of speed. I've modified my rudder steering from a tiller to a push tiller and I still need to get comfortable with the arrangement. Still, was going good and got up to the far end of the pond when I was about to go on a reach across the pond and go around a fishing skiff that was at that end before a wonderful broad reach down the length of the pond (about a 1/2 mile).
Well, I must have gotten greedy and sheeted too much, because I caught a gust square on and before I know it, I am taking on water and pretty much sank! Karma, I suppose. Happily the water was warm. Also good is that nobody was there to take pictures! Even better was that the fisherman and his son were willing to render aid to help me get my Pica to shore.
In the course of this, I learned a lot of interesting details that will be applied in the future:
An ill fitted life-jacket is nearly useless to swim in. It doesn't sound like much fun, but the darned things have to be near strait jacket tight to keep them from riding up or snagging lines.
Speaking of lines, since I went over on the lee side, I wound up getting tangled with my mainsheet, and it was somewhat disconcerting to get out of it, as some of the lines were getting up under my life jacket. It made me understand why the old timers would carry a knife on them to cut themselves free. Happily I didn't need to exercise such an option.
One thing I did right though--I did not panic. Happily, neither did my son, who was watching from the shore and came over to where I was able to beach the boat. Unhappily I must remind myself that I might have been better to abandon ship and not try to resolve it right there right then.
While I could right the boat with the mast and rig in place, each time I did so, the vessel was completely swamped. I did release the halyard to bundle the sail, but this yielded no useful results. It didn't help that the decks over the future airboxes were not watertight yet, so they flooded. Next time (oh yes, there will be a next time) I'll have to see how the boat rescues if the mast is removed, as the boat did actually sit high on its side and without the mast may well have come out much drier.
Figuring out how to rescue the boat without it being awash would be nice in another way: after I brought it to shore, it took a long time to bail the fooled thing out. Perhaps I need a bigger (than l gallon) bailing bucket. Needless to say, once I got it bailed out, I rowed back to the dock to pull out. I didn't feel like trying my luck again--at least not til those air boxes are tight.
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