After picking up our little Hobie 16, I was very anxious to get it out on the water and try all the skills we had learned in ASA-101 class. Couldn’t hardly hardly wait to get it out and on the lake. This was a couple of Sundays ago. Probably not the best choice, but alas we didn’t die and we did learn from our myriad of mistakes so it was an educational outing. I had wanted to go on Saturday, but that day was spent putting on the replacement trampoline, the original one was old, worn, and tattered; on the brink of collapsing at any moment. We bought a used tramp to replace it but it looks great.
From the start I should have known. After we left the house we realized we forgot to bring the life jackets. Uggh, turn around and add another 30-45 minutes to our start time. When we arrived at the lake around 2:00 or so, we set out to rig the boat for sailing. As we’ve never done this before, and had only witnessed the previous boat owner go through the setup once, we immediately attracted attention from other sailors at Hobie Point who came over to help.
After watching us struggle a bit, Lil says “That’s not gonna work.”
Right. So with some – well OK – a lot of help we raised the mast which is by far the most difficult part of rigging this vessel. We backed it off the trailer into the mucky water and hoisted the sails while we tried to figure out how everything went together. We loaded and bungeed the cooler to the deck and lastly we attached the collapsible oar to the trampoline. It took a long time but eventually we were off the shore moving by wind power alone! Little did we know that the small amount of wind that got us out on the lake was quickly diminishing.
The previous owner had set up the rigging for racing with a “raked” mast, and this arrangement means that if you don’t turn through the wind fast enough you will just end up pointing into the wind like a weather vane. Which happened on our first tack. Almost everything we learned about tacking on a monohull simply did not work on the catamaran. We were dead in the water and there wasn’t much we could do except to get frustrated. We eventually did get turned sideways enough to catch the breeze and we were headed back to the shore and the wind died. We were drifting to a halt. And by now, the sun was going down due to our late start.
Judith says, “If I start swimming now I know I can make it to the shore.”
I was in a panic. I picked up the oar that actually was a freebie thrown in with the tramp purchase and it never would have crossed my mind about getting one, let alone bringing one along, and started paddling frantically to turn the cat broadside to any available breeze. Luckily a very light breeze picked up and carried us slowly and gently to shore. We quickly beached the thing, packed the sails, put it on the trailer, de-rigged the mast, and locked it down on the trailer for transport just as the sun was going below the horizon.
Always check the wind forecast. Always bring an oar or two. Learn how it’s rigged and practice doing the rigging. Don’t start too late. Bring a cell phone on board, just in case. It could’ve been much worse – to have been stranded on the lake after sundown with no wind and no lights. Lessons learned.