I was getting ready to solo sail the little Hobie 16 catamaran.  My first truly single hand sailing adventure, and Judith had reluctantly agreed, usually she requires that I have some type of supervision when sailing.  When I arrived at Hobie point, no one was there.  So I set out to rig the boat.  All by myself I raised and set the mast, so proud.  Then I received a text from Terry saying that he was on his way and would be there in about half an hour.  OK that’s good, Terry and Christine are our sailing cohorts, and I think this would have been his first time out on the lake also without a seasoned captain.  So I waited for Terry.

Terry, prior to launch

In the meantime, another vessel pulled up on a trailer.  It was a Hobie 18, the owner came over and introduced himself as Matt.  We chatted briefly; turns out he used to be the owner of my boat!  Small world, huh.  He said that it was his first boat also.

Lee at the helm

Terry at the helm

Terry arrived and we set out on the lake.  The sailing was great.  Nice strong steady wind, we were really cutting through the waves, bouncing along.  Terry and I alternated taking the helm after tacks.  Tacking was a challenge as usual.  I have got to figure out how to tack that thing more efficiently!  Anyways, we were having a great time going back and forth by the dam, alternating at the tiller.

While on a port tack, close hauled, we were screaming along, bouncing on the water.  The wind must have really picked up.  Water spray off the starboard hull was flying everywhere, it looked really cool, so I grabbed the camera to snap a picture.  The instant I clicked the shutter is when the aft of the boat came up out of the water and we flipped over.  We had orchestrated somewhat of a pitch-pole maneuver that left us swimming in the drink.

Starboard hull submerged, this is what caused us to flip

“I can touch bottom.” Terry exclaims.

“Uhh, no, you’re standing on the jib.” I reply.

OK so now what?  What are we going to do now, seeing as the sailboat is lying on its side in the water in the middle of the lake?  Fortunately there is a mast float at the top of the mast that prevents the entire boat from turning upside down, with the mast sticking down below the surface.  I had read that we needed to point the hulls into the wind, and to do that you should stand on the aft part of the hull in the water.  We tried that and we flipped the cat over to the other side, onto the other hull.  We did this twice.  Great.  By this time now we started getting attention of other boaters and a couple of motor boats came by.  One big power boat threw us a hefty line, we started to wrap it around the hull that was up in the air and then Matt in his speedy Hobie 18 came by.  He jumped in the water, swam over, and showed us how to right the craft.  By “showed us how” of course I mean that he did most of the work.  Well at least I know now that it can be done.

After we were righted we wanted to make a bee-line right back to the shore.  The wind had really picked up and by this time we had been pushed by the wind while sideways and had drifted far, far away from the protected area near the dam and were almost literally in the middle of the lake.  With the increased wind the wave size was more than I had expected — they weren’t white-capping but it was close.  Also I thought that the boat hulls were sitting lower in the water than I had expected, I discovered later that there was more water in them than I thought should be, and perhaps that’s why they weren’t so buoyant.  So, needless to say it was some work to zig-zag our way back to our start point.  With the wind coming almost straight from the beach it meant sailing close hauled on the big wind over strong waves to get back.  It was some scary fun and took lots of concentration to manage because we sure didn’t want to tip over…. again.

Back on shore I brought over a Shiner beer to Matt and thanked him for his help.

There is a video of an Oracle sailing racing team capsizing very much the same way we did.  But their boat is much bigger and more costly to repair.  The only thing we needed fixing were our bruised egos.  That and I lost an insulated stainless steel mug and an almost brand new life preserver.  Terry lost his ball cap.  We both can’t wait to get back out on the water again.

The Oracle team capsize video can be found here.