Spinnaker!

Trying out a new procedure on a boat is always interesting and can become exciting if things don’t go quite to plan. H had practised raising and lowering his spinnaker in his boat at berth but had not tried sailing with it. Today was supposed to have moderate winds North of Workington and so seemed a good day to go through with it.
As one of the 3 crew, I turned up at Whitehaven for a briefing at 08.00, I was glad I had done some homework as there are a lot of ropes to learn; Lazy Guy and Working Sheet on one side, Lazy Sheet  and Working Guy on the other, a downhaul and an uphaul as well as a main halyard – all in addition to the mainsail and jib sheets, halyards, reef lines and furler. There is a very definite procedure to pull the spinnaker up and lower it down, which, if it goes wrong, can cause a lot of sail twisted in a knot of rope and bad language from the Captain. The Spinnaker lay listening with us to all this, packed like a parachute precisely in its bag. It knew we had high expectations!
Out at sea everything went to plan and Spinnaker wriggled out of its bag, its lines, Lazy and Working, were arranged to winches and its pole inserted at the correct angle. Woohoo! It blossomed like an enormous sunflower in a glorious orange half globe before our eyes. Tuning it to actually pull us along, rather than shyly curling its sides up or wrapping itself lovingly around the forestay, was a bit more tricky as the wind became lighter and lighter and rain became heavier, but overall the experiment was a success.
Taking it down and dropping the yards of rope and armfuls of wet nylon through the hatch into the cabin was also drenchingly successful although the pole did have a recalcitrant moment when it whipped out unreachably over the bow and had to be leashed back by the Good Working Guy.


Thank goodness we lowered it when we did! During that time the swell on the ocean had increased into deep troughs and peaks and the land disappeared in a grey mist of rain. Suddenly, strong and rowdy as a drunken sailor the wind hit us, heeling us over so we could view the waves from side on. (Plus, one random dolphin) The helm had both hands gripped to the tiller to stop the boat from spinning. The mainsail and the jib needed reefing, fast. Steering the boat nose to wind whilst the reefs were put in took a huge effort of concentration as well as physical skill and strength. This, in combination with the motion, took its toll on the helmsperson who between one breath and the next succumbed to violent sea-sickness and a complexion as green as the billows we were being tossed on. Still, the reefs did make a difference and we tried to make a course for the harbour mouth 5 miles away.


 Unfortunately, now the wind was blowing straight towards us and we would have to tack back all the way. This brought up another issue. Tide dictates there is only a 6 hour window when you can leave and re-enter Whitehaven harbour and at our slower pace we would not get there. That would have meant another 6 hours uncomfortably pootling about at sea.
So again, thank goodness for a diesel engine! Up it chugged and bumping the waves like a white ping-pong ball we jounced our way back, just reaching the lock gates on half past two, the deadline for water depth.
The calm and warmth of the inner harbour enveloped us and we thawed chilled fingers and wrung out soaked hats. Cups of tea and cake (sips of hot water for our unfortunate helmsperson) and a debrief ended an interestingly roller-coaster of a day.