First Guppy Adventure

Well this weekend I ran down to Oklahoma and bought Scot's Guppy (Hull
291).

Saturday morning started with a lesson in rigging the guppy, and
getting it ready to sail. Then we took it all apart, due to the
extremely high winds. 20mph or so
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/histGraphAll?day=16&year=2006&month=9&ID=KSW\
O&type=3
Later in the afternoon we decided he apparent winds had dropped.
Apparently we were deluded by I our desire to go sailing. So off we
went. Here's the complete day's chart
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KSWO/2006/9/16/DailyHistory.html?req\
_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA
(this proves that Scot's wife is smarter than Scot and I together,
because she elected to stay home with the kids)

I can't back a trailer. This is an established fact. I tried anyway,
after an embarrassing number of retries we got the boat in the water.
While I was parking Scot motored over to the dock. I met him and we
tried to get the main up and decided that was a wiser action for the
bigger lake area, and tried to motor/partly furled jib only sail out
through the tiny opening and into the lake. I successfully crashed my
new boat into the rocks, mostly dislodging the trolling motor, but not
entirely, and putting a couple of nice dings in the hull. I figured
that was a fine way to start my first sailing adventure. (I've crewed
a bigger boat once or twice but never really sailed on my own) I
figured it had to get better from here.

We get out onto the lake and try and while I keep us pointed sort of
mostly into the wind Scot tried to bring up the main sail. After
getting half way across the lake and deciding this was a doomed
effort, we go with sailing on the jib alone. We unfurl it (since it
has scot's $10 rolling jib furler). Then tearing along nearly out of
control we furl it back down and decide maybe we should head back for
the dock. While we can sail pretty near the wind we're still loosing
ground. After a while Scot says "Call Marki, tell her to send the
lake patrol to rescue the idiots in the sail boat") and we find
ourselves a safer bit of shore and run for it.

Then we got to play with anchors, and learn the importance of keeping
one's anchor ropes neatly coiled and tied. I stood in the waist deep
water and held the bow line while Scot untied the knots and hauled the
anchor out about 40 ft, and then we tied it off to the bow. Repeat
process with second anchor. Then we moved the anchors out. At some
point in here Scot's wife calls back and says "There's no lake patrol
after labor day, and I had to call the OSU police, they're going to
try to find somebody but no guarantees." A while after that we got a
call from some guy asking where we were. I gave Scot his phone and
stayed with the boat, and came back with a report of "They found
somebody. 30 minutes."

So we fiddled around and walked the boat into slightly deeper water.
Our rescuer came in a ski boat. Since we were in such shallow water
we picked up our anchors and just held the boat by hand, while our
fine rescuers and threw us a long line, he missed. This is why you
should have something floating and a knot on your line I guess. After
some assorted gathering of the rope and throwing and shouting I caught
the rope and dragged it back. A bowline and two half hitches later we
were tied on a very long rope. Our rescuer then dragged our boat (and
us hanging onto it) out into deeper water. Apparently he was very
near to running aground we found out later.

The guppy was then towed back to the dock where more backing madness
ensued. I wonder if I can find trailer backing lessons somewhere. We
got out and onto shore, called home, and went home.

I think this was possibly the best sailing lesson I ever could have
had. I learned that I'm stupid, boats are dangerous, and I should be
careful, thoughtful and prepared. Nobody got hurt, no significant
damage was done, except to our pride. And I'm going to be doing a lot
of research and planning over the winter so that when I go out in the
spring I'll be better prepared. (And winds of 20mph gusting to 35mph
are a bad idea.)

I'm sure Scot will have more to say.


Re: First Guppy Outing (very long sorted tail of idiots in a boat)

--- In Guppy13@yahoogroups.com, "Laura Thomas" wrote:
> I'm sure Scot will have more to say.

Actually, I think it was a very good learning experience--in addition
to showing that 25 mph winds and 2 foot waves were a bit on the high
side for the Guppy. It actually handled the waves pretty well, but we
kept getting pushed downwind as we tried to beat our way upwind, and I
think that's what kept us from making it back to the dock. The hull
actually handled the waves better than I'd have expected, although my
backside is sore from sitting on the unpadded cockpit seats through
that 3 hour roller coaster ride. We even managed to bury the rub rail
on the lee side and submerge the bow a few times, but the boat never
felt unstable.

I fully appreciate the value of reef points now, and I think that if
we'd been sailing under 1/2 the jib (like we were) plus half the main,
that we'd have been much better off. As it was, under just the reefed
jib, the tiller had to be held at quite and angle to keep a straight
course under such an unbalanced sail distribution, and the rudder kept
stalling when the waves hit just wrong. With the stalled rudder, the
bow would swing to weather and I'd have to sheet out, pick up some
speed, and try heading back into the wind a bit. I think under reefed
main and reefed jib, things would have balanced well enough to keep
the rudder from stalling out just trying to maintain course, and we
could have managed to beat our way upwind, albeit slowly.

The roller furler did hold up, even under the significant loads it was
under Saturday. I think it's a requirement that before actually
leaving the dock, the jib needs to be furled and unfurled a few times,
with someone providing tension on the jib sheet, to make sure it's
rolled tight. As it was, things were a bit loose, and we snarled it
up the first time we furled it--it was also pointing dead into the
wind, and the flapping caused the jib sheet to wrap around itself.
After that, it tighened up on the furler, but we could only reef in
about half the jib, because we didn't have as many turns around the
furler as we really needed. Note to Laura: rig it up in the yard,
get it rolled up nice and tight, and mark the furling line so you know
how tight is really tight. That way you'll know for sure you can get
it wrapped all the way up if you need to.

Anything electronic you want to keep on the boat should be
double-bagged in Ziploc bags. My cellphone was single bagged, and
while it lasted through a number of dunkings, it didn't survive being
in a lifejacket pocket as we were towed alongside the Guppy getting
out to deeper water. The MacGregor 21 came with an emergency signal
kit (flares, smoke markers, and flare gun) that had gotten wet--who
the heck puts a MARINE signal kit in a NON WATERPROOF container? I
tossed all the ruined pyrotechnicls, cleaned the corrosion off the
flare gun and bought some new 12 gauge flares, which I put in Ziploc
bags--they're getting double bagged before they go back in the boat.
And silly me, I actually thought about grabbing the flare gun Saturday
but didn't. Oh, well, there went what may well have been my only
chance to ever shoot off a flare gun...

I had never really used an anchor before Saturday. After we got the
anchor line sorted out (forget coiling, I think in the future
"stacking" the line in a canvas sack is going to be the way to go) and
the anchors set, I was amazed at how well they held. The Guppy had a
small aluminum fluke anchor (Danforth type) and a 6" cast iron
mushroom when we got it, and I set both of them in about a 20 degree
"V" pattern. While mushroom anchors are supposed to be horrible, on
the soft mud bottom (where the mud squished up through your toes as
you walk on it) it sank right down and dug in well, easily providing
enough grip I couldn't pull it loose without getting a few feet from
it and lifting right up. The fluke anchor just tore into the mud,
burying the flukes all the way down. It would have probalby held the
Guppy through a pretty decent storm (which in Oklahoma, means
hurricane force winds), but it was a lot harder to pull out of the
mud. It's probably best suited for harder bottoms, or as a backup for
the mushroom. The fluke type usually outperforms much larger and
heavier anchors of other types on anything but rocky bottoms, which
apparently need a hook-type anchor.

And on the topic of anchors, sea anchors suddenly make a lot more
sense to me. Heaving to to raise the mainsail or crawl out on the
foredeck to adjust the jib furler just wasn't an option Saturday,
because even on high the trolling motor wasn't able to keep up with
the wind and waves. If we'd had a sea anchor, we could have hove to
and fiddled with the sails without floundering in the waves. Laura
thought of tossing the spare sails overboard but didn't mention it to
me--while tossing the sails overboard probably wouldn't have done
much, the sail bag just might have done the trick. After spending
some time looking, there are a bunch of places that sell small sea
anchors (usually called "drift anchor" or "trolling anchor", and
targeted for fishing boats) that look like they would do a good job of
holding a small sailboat head on to the wind. It ocurred to me after
a couple of hours of sailing back and forth on the lake that I
couldn't stop--I was stuck there and had to keep sailing until I could
figure out how to get us anchored somewhere. A sea anchor would
probably slow things down enough to allow anchoring off a weather
shore, if needed. We were lucky enough to reach a spot where the wind
parallelled the shore with a nice looking beach, but things got pretty
exiting there for a while.

I can probalby come up with some more later, but that's all I've got
right now. And Laura, I forgot to mention this, but that wasn't in
fact the worst boating trip I've had--back in high school I managed to
dismast dad's Starfish (a TX made Sunfish clone) in 15 mph winds on
Grand Lake, a good half mile offshore from my parent's lake house, and
not far from the opposite bank, which was a windward shore. I did try
the trick of using the sailing rig as a sea anchor then, because it
was all I could do--no place in that boat to store an anchor, flare
gun, radio, or anything else. I finally attracted someone's attention
by waving and got a tow back, after drifting for an hour or so...

--scot