More dingy sailing
Today was the second day out with my Flipper sailing dingy. No camera this time since I was alone. I didn’t have Rasmus as crew, and there was quite a lot of wind. I managed a fairly graceful launch and headed for the open water, tacking a few times in the harbour and only screwing up slightly. Outside of the harbour pier the wind picked up and I started getting a feel for the balance of the boat, hiking hard and nervously controlling the mainsail to adjust the power: to get this thing to really fly I need to install the trapeze or sail with a friend for extra weight.
I made it across to Nacka Strand in no time at all, planing at what felt like at least ten knots at a close reach with slightly slack sails to moderate the power. I turned around and started sailing in the other direction. The hiking straps had pulled a couple of large stailess steel screws loose so I headed back to do some repairs. Suddenly my coordination failed, I was late in letting the mainsail loose in a strong gust, and the boat capsized. I used to sail Lasers in Dar es Salaam, so I knew (in theory) what to do. Grab a hold of the centerboard before the boat turns turtle, and pull down. In a Laser this works every time, but the Flipper is a bit larger, and has a much higher mast and more sails, so no matter how hard I pulled on the centerboard the boat remained on it’s side.
My drysuit was keeping me … well dry … but hanging on to the centerboard, doing chin-ups to apply more weight was becoming tiring. A family sailing boat stopped to check on me, but couldn’t do much to help. I swam around the boat to check if the sheets were loose and undid them from the cleats. I tried again, unsuccessfully, for about ten minutes until I realised that the way to do it was to chin-up and then wrap your legs around the centerboard, hoisting yourself out of the water completely to use all your weight to right the boat. I finally got the boat right-side-up and headed back to the harbour, exhausted but pleased.
All in all I love sailing this thing: it is quite challenging, but goes like a #€@%!. Lessons learned: trapeze needed for single-handing this thing, always let sheets out before trying to right a dingy, and get a whistle so you can attract attention if you get into trouble. Upside down in the middle of a heavily trafficked shipping lane is not a good place to be.
