Greetings,
So I finally was able to get my DS1 out on the water today, but ran into a issue I never faced while learning to sail in the JY15 on a large inland lake...
First off, heres my sailing environment:
The inland lake where I have my boat docked only allows me to sail in one direction (southwest)... I also have to fight a constant current which flows in from the great lake in the direction toward the bridge and then into a small bayou, making it a bottle neck situation as well.
So with my dock and land due north, bridge due east (about 50 ft), more dockage and land due west (about 300 feet), and the other shoreline directly across from my marina about a football field and a half away ....I have only but one choice, to get the boat pointed directly in a southwesterly direction. I can only achieve this by going up current and usually up wind, since there is usually a western wind coming off the great lake. It takes about the length of two football fields to have a clearing away from the bridge and land, before I can even attempt to get sails up, before the current takes my little DS1 back to where I came from and jams me into the bridge!
Problem: So once I get out to a spot where I can finally raise sails... I raised my sails, but found the bow of the boat was just being pushed into a 180 and back down current and wind?? Every direction I pointed my boat in, including into the wind, it did the same thing...and when the sails would fill, it would be worse, and throw me into a 180 spin back in the direction of which I came, back downwind and down current.
I've never experience this before, and cannot for the life of me, figure out how to stop the boat from doing this. Finally I just had to turn back and call it a day....Does anyone have any good sailing tips to a novice such as myself, on how to stop this from happening and make headway?? I'm sure it would be easy for most, but I'm just starting out, first time on my own with a sailboat, so any advice from you pros out there would be greatly appreciated!!
Good Winds to All,
Dave Art