Winds blew steadily 15-20 mph on Saturday, May 8, all along the York River off the Chesapeake Bay. I was completing Day 3 of an adult sailing course on my Hunter 320, with both the genoa and mainsail reefed to three-quarters.
The crew of seven was by now experienced at spilling wind and going to a beam reach to flatten out the other way. Everyone had on life preservers, but then I noticed one woman lying on the bow had shed hers. I instructed her to get it back on and she reluctantly agreed.
At 3 o’clock as we turned one more tack before heading home, a sustained gust of 40 mph righted the boat and began flailing the sails. If nothing else, it dramatically proved a point I had made repeatedly for three Saturdays that modern sailboats will round up before they’re knocked over.
I turned on the engine to gain power upwind. A sturdy crewman and I attempted to pull in the genoa furler, to no avail. The wind was so great as to apply equal pressure on both sides of the sail as it flailed mercilessly, tearing the leech all the way down from the top.
Meanwhile the boom quickly flailed back and forth because the traveler had been down on the starboard side. The effect was to flail the main and virtually shred it from the outhaul forward. As I sought to reel in the self-furling main, the outhaul line slipped its moorings and went right up into the boom. As luck would have it, the flailing effect jumped the mainsail’s continual furling line off its winch at the base of the mast. I worked my way up with a winch and grinded the main back in as the genoa sheets whipped my arms and shoulders.
With the main cranked back in, albeit in tatters, the boat fell off more into a beam reach, enabling us finally to pull the genoa furling line in. The wind continued at 40 for ten minutes. The entire event took five minutes.
Lessons learned: (1) I should have locked down the traveler cars on each side, on each tack. (2) Should have reefed to halfway instead of three-quarters to anticipate higher winds.
The class was well prepared and took the incident quite well. At least it wasn’t raining. One woman said, “You can’t scare me now.” And of course it could have been worse. The next morning, a 58-foot yacht caught fire at the marina and took two boats down with it.
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