Which Way To Starboard?

For the next three years, my wife, my daughter, the two boys, and I sailed this little jewel. One day, I decided to take my daughter on a long day sail across the Lake of Two Mountains. Halfway across the lake, the boom vang broke loose from the boom. The boom vang keeps the boom down close to the boat, keeps proper tension on the sail, and keeps the boom attached to the mast. We had our life vests on and I had attached a 2-foot long, ¼-inch diameter rope to the section of the boom that is attached to the mast, as a precautionary measure. I instructed Roxanne to wrap this rope around her hand to help her keep her balance when the boat shifted positions because of the wind or waves. For an eight-year-old, she was fairly brave. At one point after the boom vang broke loose, the boom and the sail shifted to a higher position. I didn’t like the loss of control this caused. The boat was swinging from 0 to 20 degrees in jerky motions, lifting and heeling. The boom vang had been ripped out of its housing. I had an idea what to do and told Roxanne what I had in mind. At a certain moment, with her help holding up the boom vang in a certain way, I would let go of the rudder and lunge forward to grab the creature from her hand and plunge its little head into the second available hole, a slot just under the boom. This she understood, but all the while I was under great stress, anxious for my daughter’s life and mine. The wind was quite strong and I didn’t want the boat to flip over … not there, away from any available help. We were two miles from shore in any direction. I checked the waves and wind and then turned the boat into the wind. On my signal to Roxanne, I lurched forward and grabbed the beastly creature and shakily shoved its head in the hole. I then turned the boat back to windward and pulled in on the sheet that pulled the boom back to its correct position. Everything was fine again. In a plastic bag hanging from the boom near the mast were my cigarettes and a lighter. That’s where Roxanne was also handy. She passed me a cigarette and my lighter and I lit it and took a big drag. Ah… The rest of the day went beautifully. In the same bag we had a nice, light lunch (gourmet style), a couple of baloney sandwiches and two cans of pop. My adventures multiplied. For my wife’s first time sailing, we had prepared the boat for an afternoon of fun. My idea was to teach her the basics. I was in for a surprise. As we were getting ready to board, I asked her to sit in the front of the cockpit. As soon as she tried to get in the boat, and I mean tried to get in the boat, she started to scream very loudly. “What is it?” I asked. She said that the boat had moved and she thought that she was going to drown. “Oh, come on,” I said, “sit in the boat.” So again she tried to get in, but she was like a frightened puppy, and I wasn’t even in the boat yet. I had forgotten that she was a very poor swimmer. Finally she got in. I told her to relax, that everything was going to be fine. As I pulled on the mainsheet, the boat heeled a bit, a bit too much for her, so she screamed bloody murder. Everybody up on this cement breakwater was looking down at us. I asked her to stop screaming because she was scaring the life out of me and told her that we weren’t going anywhere until she felt completely safe. A half hour went by as we practiced tiny sailing maneuvers in the small, protected bay before she became willing to venture out. Then we crossed the lake, some two miles wide at this point. I explained to her that we were in the waviest area and that this was going to be fun. To my amazement, she bubbled with joy every time a wave came crashing onto the bow, getting her all wet. We sailed across the lake and back and then decided to stop for lunch. After a cigarette, she was ready to tackle it again. She was never frightened from that time on. Maneuvering a boat was quite another thing for her. That same year my family and I went up to my mother’s place at Lake Etchemin for our summer vacation. We brought our sailboat along to get in some sailing. The day after we arrived, my wife and I decided to go sailing. It was an overcast day and the wind was blowing pretty strong. The temperature was good, in the mid seventies. We donned our life jackets. My wife got into the front part of the tiny cockpit. I pushed the boat out and climbed into the back. I pulled in the mainsheet a bit and put down the rudder. Small sail boats have a retractable keel and a pivoting rudder, which kicks up when it hits the bottom in shallow water. This is a safety feature to help prevent damage to the boats and allow them to come closer to shore. The retractable keel was in the upward position, so we began lowering it as we were leaving shallow water. It could reach down 3 feet; some keels can reach as far down as 4 feet. I barely had the boat set up when a huge gust of wind blew the boat onto its side. With no time to put my feet under the heeling straps, when the wind let up just as fast, I fell backwards and overboard. When I came up, my wife was still on the boat; but before she knew it, she was also thrown over the side. The boat made a circle and returned to its original position, and while my wife was still underwater, the boat passed over her and the keel rammed her leg. She came up above water panting for air, fearful and hurting. I told her to start swimming towards the sailboat, but neither she nor I could keep up with the boat, even though it was on its side, with one end sticking up 3 feet out of the water and the other end 6 inches below the water. We swam to shore slowly. I checked out her leg and found it was just a bad bruise but very tender. All this time our daughter was watching us from her grandmother’s porch. At one point she had lost sight of us and had started to panic. She cried, “They’re gone! Do you have binoculars, Grandma?” Finally we surfaced, and she never stopped watching us until we were out of the water. Unbeknownst to us, some kind fellow saw our distress, and went out to fetch the sailboat. He towed it onto the public beach, but not without putting it upright first. We walked back to the house, and from there we brought the trailer to the beach, not really knowing where the boat was. To our surprise, the boat was right there, and the chap even gave us a hand putting it back onto the trailer. That year being my first year, I continued to learn much about sailing and boat handling; things like how to capsize a boat on purpose and bring it to the completely upside down position, and then exercise the maneuver of bringing it right side up again and climb into the boat. Through personal experiences and books, I mastered the small art of sailing. I even got the boat to plane on the water – that was a scary feeling the very first time! I also made a jib, which gave the boat more speed. My boat wasn’t designed for a jib, but I improvised, and what fun! The next year I went to Oka Park on my own. I was preparing to sail, and I noticed that the wind was quite strong. There were a number of surfboard sailors out there, and they were flying. There were no other sailboats, just surfboarders. I was a bit leery about the situation, so I decided just to watch them for a while. It wasn’t a sunny day, more of a grey, lonely, menacing day. I finally got up the courage to venture out. After all, it was only wind and water, and I did have my vest. So out I pushed the boat. I slid into the cockpit, feet under the heeling straps, keel board and rudder up. The water was shallow for the first 20 feet. Then down rudder, down with the movable keel, and the wind picked me up from behind like it had that day my wife and I had had our spill. The boat was moving out marvelously fast, and I had good control. Then the waves grew to about 1 ½ feet, about twice the height of the boat. I figured I had better stay in close to shore – about 300 feet or so out – as the sailboarders were doing. I decided to