CTAS 15: Crashing Corvus
Cycling Through a Storm
Previously, in Cycling Through a Storm One: Cycling Through a Storm Two: A House, a Boy, a Girl, a Car, a Dock, a Boat, a Hug Three: Starting Sequence Four: Yacht Race Five: Save the Hat! Six: Squid's Bar Seven: Sailors and Fishermen Eight: Maxhole Nine: Schwinn Continental Ten: Psycle Snobs Café Eleven: The Sultan of Strings Twelve: Fetching Thirteen: Spelunking Fourteen: The FNG
Mainsail and jib raised, Stewie steered Corvus upwind to run the crew through pre-race tacks.
“This is more work than I remember,” Lloyd said. He looped the jib sheet fast around the winch while the bow swung hard across the wind and the jib swept the foredeck. He raced at reeling the sheet while the sail puffed open. His footing was uncertain and his hands, arms, shoulders wouldn’t go fast enough. Filled with wind, the sail was too much to haul directly. He grabbed a winch handle and fit it atop the winch like a big socket wrench. He ground the handle round with one fist and kept the line taut with the other until the jib drew close to the boat’s port side.
Out of breath, Lloyd fell to the bench. Stewie—he locked eyes with Stewie.
“I made that hard for you,” Stewie said.
“How’s that?” Lloyd sat straighter.
“I steered down with the gust just when the sails were coming around.”
Lloyd slapped his thigh. “That—that’s just asking for trouble in a race!”
“Wanted to see how you’d handle it.”
Lloyd half smiled beneath his beard.
“You handled it okay,” Stewie said. “Next time, when you can’t bring it in fast, yell Tail! Vic can reach over to handle the line while you grind.”
Lloyd nodded.
Stewie called for another tack. He started the turn and Lloyd let the jib backfill slightly before releasing the sheet. He piloted the boat evenly from starboard tack to port, and Vic had no trouble pulling the sail to close-hauled position before it filled again with wind.
“Nice,” Lloyd said, and then, “Should we practice that other way again?”
“Sure!” Stewie grinned. He shoved the tiller hard aside. “Helms alee!”
“Hey!” Lark yelled. She scrambled to get hold of a side stay.
“Ready starboard!” Vic laughed.
The jib was backfilled already when Vic freed his sheet from the cleat and the sail flew away forward. It got plastered inside the stays and Corvus dropped flat on the river. Swinging one stiff arm, Lark pushed and batted the sail to guide it over the deck.
Lloyd took the limp jib sheet, spun two wraps around the winch quick before the sail was fully across the bow and refilling with air. He managed to haul quite a lot of it in before its belly was full of wind and he was forced to use a winch handle. “Tail!” he yelled.
Vic took the sheet from Lloyd’s hand, leaned onto his own bench at starboard and hauled line while Lloyd, standing square to the winch, churned the handle clockwise with both fists. Almost immediately the jib was firm against the spreader on the boat’s port side.
“Made!” Lloyd yelled, fixing the line into the cam cleat at the winch.
“Nice!” Stewie put a hand up for a high five.
“What the hell was that?!” Lark stood on the high side at the beam, one hand on the mast for balance, the other on her hip for emphasis.
“Simulating a panic tack to test the FNG,” Vic said.
“I almost went overboard!” Lark protested.
“No you didn’t,” Vic said, loud enough for Lark, but not for Stewie.
“Wouldn’t have been realistic without some panic,” Stewie said, loud enough for everyone. “Should we try it going downwind?”
“NO!” Lark punched Stewie in the face with her eyeballs, all the way from foredeck.
“Heading down,” Stewie said, nodding first at Lark, then at Lloyd.
“Easing,” Lloyd said, slipping some line out to keep the jib full while Corvus eased away from the wind and relaxed close to level again on the river.
“We should use the smaller jib,” Lark said.
“It’s the 135 we’ve got up?” Stewie said.
“Yeah.”
“It’s fine.”
“Smaller would be a storm jib?” Lloyd said to Vic.
Vic nodded. “She knows.”
“I don’t think we need to practice with the spinnaker,” Stewie said, looking between Vic and Lark. “This FNG ain’t just fiddling around!”
The four worked well together through the starting sequence. They made a good start, just behind Blow, the only boat near them at the starting line. After Lloyd’s sail was trimmed to close haul, he scrambled across to perch on the high side, facing the river with his legs dangling on the hull outside the boat, just like seasoned rail meat. Soon they were parallel with Blow, only a few feet separating the boats.
“New guy?” Blow’s skipper Roger called across the gap to Stewie.
Stewie grinned and nodded.
“Just filling in,” Lloyd said to Roger with a wave.
“For now!” Stewie said.
“Ready about!” Roger called to his crew. He looked back, pointed at Lloyd with two fingers in front of his own eyes. Blow tacked away from Corvus.
“Gonna follow?” Vic said to Stewie.
“Nah—I don’t know what Roger thinks he sees over there. Wind’s better here in the middle.”
Before they reached the turn at the first race mark, Bones radioed the fleet to announce a course change. “We are shortening the course to a Triangle Three. The finish will now be at the downwind mark.”
“Hear that everyone?” Stewie asked.
Vic and Lloyd nodded. “Kinda weird,” Vic said.
“Lark?” Stewie yelled.
“What?”
“The course is shortened!”
“How much?”
“Just one triangle,” Vic told her. “Three legs.”
Lark nodded. Standing on the deck’s high side, she pointed ahead to the south. “Something big’s popped up!”
Stewie leaned back to better see ahead, around the high side of Corvus. “That wasn’t in the forecast.”
Corvus’s and Blow’s paths to the upwind mark converged again as both crews prepared for the first buoy rounding.
“Ready to jibe?” Stewie shouted for Lark to hear at the bow.
“Any time!” Lark yelled over her shoulder.
“Ready here,” Vic and Lloyd confirmed in unison.
“Starboard!” Roger yelled from Blow, attempting to assert right of way.
“Starboard and leeward, but I see you,” Stewie said to Roger across the shrinking gap of water between the boats.
“Thank you,” Roger nodded.
“Jibing,” Stewie said and pushed the tiller to swing Corvus away from Blow, very close to the red buoy, the upwind mark.
“Can you see it?” Lloyd asked as Corvus glided near, his eyes glued to the mark.
“Almost,” Stewie said. “Rounding. Spinnaker up!”
“Watch whether he hits it,” Roger said to his own crew, pointing at Corvus. “And jibing!” he added.
“He brushed it,” someone on Blow hissed.
“That’s just the bow wake moving it!” Lark hissed back as she began hauling down on one of the mast-mounted halyards. “Spinnaker going up!”
“Pole coming back!” Vic announced. “Pull it out, Lloyd—pull that line fast!”
“On it!” Lloyd pulled hard, reeling full arm lengths of the spinnaker sheet at the low side of the boat until the big parachute sail popped open ahead of Corvus.
“Pole coming back more,” Vic called.
“Not too fast,” Stewie said. “We’re reaching, not far off the next mark.”
“Holding,” Vic nodded, then stared to the top of the mast. He let the spinnaker pole slip slightly forward, keeping it square to the wind.
“Jib down!” Lark yelled from the bow.
“That’s you,” Vic said, pointing to the cleat that secured the jib halyard at the front of Lloyd’s side of the cockpit.
“Oh!” Lloyd leaned forward to release it.
“Trim!” Stewie yelled.
“Got it,” Lloyd said, focusing again on the spinnaker, pulling its sheet to bring the big sail back into shape.
“They’re right on us,” Lark said, looking back at Blow.
“He’s trying to block our wind to collapse our spinnaker,” Stewie said. “Ready to jibe!”
“Just a sec,” Lark said. “Gotta clear some lines first.”
“Pole coming back,” Vic said, drawing his sheet in while Stewie initiated the downwind turn.
“Okay ready,” Lark announced. She stood facing forward at the mast and squared her shoulders to the spinnaker pole, ready to change its position from starboard to port.
“Jibing.” Stewie guided the boat downwind, following the spinnaker to put the big sail directly in front of the boat.
Lark released the spinnaker pole from its anchor point on the mast. The spinnaker pole was now at right angles to the mast, so she could swing it across from starboard to port and reattach its other end to the mast. “Made,” she announced after the switch was done. Now Lloyd was controlling the spinnaker pole and Vic was trimming the spinnaker.
“Keeping it hot for a bit,” Stewie said.
“Pole going forward,” Lloyd said, easing the line to let the pole swing nearer the bow while Vic tightened the sheet to pull the sail nearer the boat’s starboard side, like an extra-large jib.
“We won’t hold this for long—just need to get to cleaner air away from Blow.”
“They’re following,” Lark said.
“Of course they are,” Stewie said. “Let’s jibe again.”
“Now?” Lloyd asked.
“Soon as you’re ready.”
“Pole coming back,” Lloyd said.
“Easing,” Vic said.
“Prepare to jibe!”
Corvus built on her lead reaching to the second race mark near the river’s bank. They jibed around the mark alone this time, not crowded by other boats. Blow remained closest behind Corvus. The course to the finish mark was nearly straight downwind, and this put the spinnaker square in front of the boat. Ordinarily this is a more comfortable course for a boat under spinnaker, as neither side is high and the crew can work on a level deck. But when the wind gets shifty, as often happens at the leading edge of a storm cell, the spinnaker can be whipped aside without warning.
Stewie kept an eye on the windex—the wind-vane indicator at the top of the mast. He steered to keep the wind just enough on the spinnaker pole’s side of the boat to prevent jibing unintentionally and being forced into what is called a jibe broach. Were the wind to suddenly shift around the back of the main sail, the boom would be thrown across the boat with great force and the spinnaker would be in precisely the wrong position.
Vic felt the weather change. They all did. The air went calm and a little chill. The spinnaker sagged, then collapsed like a children’s bouncy house when the power is cut.
“Trim!” Lark called back at Vic and Lloyd.
“Hold,” Stewie countered, lifting a palm toward his crew while shifting his gaze between the sails ahead and the windex above. “It’ll fill in. We’ve out-sailed our apparent.”
Lloyd glanced at Vic. “What’s that mean?”
“We’ve got momentum, but the wind’s changed, slower than us,” Vic said.
Lloyd nodded.
Then it hit. The spinnaker shot open ahead of the boat like a drag chute deploying behind a formula car at the end of the strip.
“Ease, ease, ease!” Stewie yelled. “Losing helm!”
“We’re on plane!” Lark yelled, loud enough at least for Vic to hear. She crouched ahead of the mast, clung to it while the boat pitched hard: port, starboard, port again.
“Keep down!” Vic yelled at Lloyd, his eyes on the main sail as the squall teased at bashing it across from port to starboard.
“Blow sheets?” Vic heard Lloyd yell.
The wind eased some and Corvus leveled on the river again, just enough for Stewie to regain helm—steering control—though they were still on plane, something a boat like Corvus was not designed for.
“I got a bad feeling,” Vic called back to Stewie.
“Me too!” Stewie let out a loud, giggling laugh.
“Crap!” Lark hugged the base of the mast.
The wind roared back, spanking Corvus hard. The spinnaker reeled away to port, driving Corvus into a roll and then a broach when the boat rounded up, the whole rudder and much of the keel exposed above the waterline. Corvus couldn’t follow her spinnaker. The boom crashed hard to the water, but not as hard as the spinnaker pole did. Later, Vic swore he’d heard the snap of the pole when it folded in half atop the water, but he couldn’t recall what it sounded like amid the roar of wind, driving rain, river water smashing him to his back on the cockpit floor. The spinnaker was pulling Corvus down sideways on the river. Vic wondered why Stewie didn’t steer to follow the spinnaker, never mind the broken pole skittering on the river.
“Man overboard!” Lark screamed into the rain and wind. “Stewie’s gone!”
Next: Stewie’s Rescue
Wow! Very exciting read.
Should have listened to Lark!