Two weeks ago was opening day for the sailing season and boating season here on the Columbia River. It was also the first time the weather was good and the cap rail was done. Before I get into the epic that led to a great deal of skipper talk, let me show the before and after photo from the cap rail. It was amazing to say the least.
Hopefully you can see the difference from the two. In the bottom photo was the state she was in when we bought her, while the top is the finished product. The Bristol Finish claims to last 10 yrs before another application is needed. We will see.
Now on to the epic..... It all started the night before when the co-skipper called one of her friends. The friend warned her about the massive amount of boats that would be out in the river on opening day. Never mind I say, I know the Navigational Rules, and we'll be fine. These came to be the famous last words.
The day started out simple enough; for crew we had Charing, Kevin, Michelle, Rachael, Cheryl, and myself. I had been watching the weather the night before on sailpdx.org. It showed the winds building to 10 knots by 11am then shifting after lunch 180o, building to 18-20 knots by 4pm. The goal was to be off the river by 4pm, so we didn't have reef, and could go out with the main and stay sail up on a nice blustery spring day.
By 11am we had the stay sail and the main up and we were nicely making way from Salpare Bay Marina toward the I205 Bridge. Charing brought out the GoPro and took a couple of nice photos of the crew and the boat in action.
As you can see my good friend Kevin is there by my side. This last photo was taken right about when all the bad decision I made turn into the epic humiliation. As I stood up from the helm I looked forward to see another cutter rig in the distance ahead. Breaking out the binoculars I could see the blazing black insignia on the mainsail, HC 38.
No way I thought to myself, another HC38 out on opening day, on my river. "Well," I said to Kevin, "should we catch him?"
He looked through the binoculars and said, "well not at this speed." Ok, for two engineers we should have known better, but we decided to run forward on the bow sprit to put up the new 110% lapper. It was about this time the motor boats start coming out on the river. Not just a couple of sink pots mind you, but every one of them that was over 30ft. All of them wearing the little blue blazers and fancy shirts, waving all types of banners and flags. I am not exaggerating when I say there was a line of stink pots from the airport to the I5 bridge in three lines. And we were dead in the middle of them wrestling the lapper trying to get it up.
Once it was raised about half way, the co-skipper calls out that the helm isn't responding. She can't keep the boat on course. I look upward to see the wind vane has spun around 180o; we are lock in irons. With the wind building and the helm all the way over the rudder acted like a sail underwater pushing us back with the current, while the wind kept us straight pointed up wind.
I stop putting up the lapper, and with it half way up run back to the cockpit to get the boat moved in one direction or another. We needed steerage because we were being encroached upon by a horde of power boats, whose skippers are out on the water only for opening day, because the price to run their ships is too expense with today's fuel prices.
When I finally get steerage our northerly course is set directly into the parade of boats. Now to say interrupting their once a year time on the river time on the river was frowned upon would be an understatement. Frankly I have never in my life seen so many air horns outside of a sale at West Marine in my life.
Horns going off everywhere while I tried in vain to bark out orders to the crew. As we drifted through the parade we were soon coming up on the other side of the river. Did I forget to mention that the winds, once they changed directions came on us at 18-25knots. Whitecaps were seen suddenly all up and down the river as if they came out of nowhere. The lapper was flogging on the forestay with such noise it became harder to hear the morons with their air horns. Even with half the lapper up the other half was now in the water at risk of being torn as it beat itself against the bow sprit.
Remembering the ASA course lesson of when in trouble - heave to, I whipped the boat around southernly stopping our sail and causing us to drift back into the parade. I ran up toward the bow to lower the sails only to find the stiff breeze was pushing us faster toward the parade once again. With even greater zest, the power boat skipper once again lay on those air horns as I struggled to drop the stay sail, the main sail and the rest of the lapper. Of course by the time I had them all down we were once again in the middle of the parade. At this point I was steaming mad; I raised my middle fingers and in my loudest hailing voice used language only the French and true sailors knew. I believe the power boats didn't take either French or knew much about sailing language because after my rant the horns went off again with more enthusiasm.
I started the motor and got far out to their way, heading back to my slip. I was glad in the end that nothing was damage and no harm came to anyone outside of a bruised ego or two.
Well next weekend is our commissioning party. Hopefully having a proper name on the boat will bring us better luck. And next time I should stick to my sail plan from the beginning.
