I'm new to sailing with a spinnaker. This past weekend, I had my new asymetrical up with the wife and son aboard and experienced a rather unpleasant incident. I was cruising down river with the chute up without any other sails, and looking really good I might add. When I got to the mouth of the river and took the turn to starboard where the channel is all hell broke loose! A gust of wind about caused the bow to submerge. Well, it almost seemed like it. My first instinct was to douse it with the sock, which I quickly found out was a useless maneuver. What happened next was another gust of wind caused me to jibe right out of the channel...well, I'm barking out commands to my horrified crew, such as crank up the diesel and try turning into the wind...what we found out was it was hard to negotiate while going aground especially with that darn sail up. It only seemed to get worse. The cheap clip I had on the clew gave way and somehow the whole line went off like a flying snake and now I have a flapping monster on my hands which almost seemed to be coming after me in revenge. I'm hitting the deck and seriously contemplating a change in hobbies, such as something safer like sky diving! While in this position, flat on my stomach, it occurs to me to just release the halyard, which I did promptly, and pulled it down, and laid on top of it. Anyway, it was an adventure I suppose. Now I'm afraid I'll be gun-shy about using it next time.