Greetings all,
I had an interesting pair of experiences to share from last week while vacationing in Florida.
We stayed 6 days on Fort Myers Beach on the Gulf side, and as I was soaking up some rays on the beach, I noticed a couple masts about a block down on the sand. I wandered over and found a beach booth renting small Hobie Cats (12 foot maybe?) for a reasonable rate (reasonable for a tourist) and so to knock off one of my bucket list items (sail in the Gulf), I rented one for an hour to take a spin.
For all of you who beach launch, I tip my hat. The rental guy basically dragged the cat out to the water about 4 feet from shore, parallel to the shore, I climbed on the trampoline and he gave it a general sideways shove outward, and told me to have a good time. The wind was blowing in, the waves were pushing in, and I'd never been on a catamaran sailboat before. Not a good way to start. There is no boom and all I really had was a clew end hook mounted sheet through a 4:1 block setup which was twisted so bad the lines didn’t really run clean, and here I was trying to figure out how move into tack with no forward motion or room to work. With my family watching, camera's poised for my crash, I simply refused to get off, pull the boat back to shore and figure it out, so I sort of worked the rudders back and forth furiously from hard to port toward center kind of driving the stern of the boat around and forward until I was pointed “generally” out at an angle, hauled in on the mainsheet (the only sheet) and finally started slowly breaking through the waves at an angle trying to ignore the very audible snap of the stays slapping (very loose). Once I got out a couple hundred feet, I was able to let out the sheet, disconnect the hook from the clew and untwist the lines. (rentals… argh…) After that, it was a pretty enjoyable, albeit wet sail with the waves periodically breaking over the bow(s).
I did come to appreciate how stable a catamaran is, although was windy, it wasn’t enough for any close calls. Coming in was a no brainer, except I wasn’t sure how to stop when I got to shore, can’t drop the sail (or at least I didn’t think I was supposed to) so I just ran a ground… they seemed fine with it.
After our days on the beach, we drove to Orlando to take my grandson to see Mickey Mouse, and much to my pleasure, the resort we were staying at had a small pond/lake, and they too rented sailboats. This time it was a SunFish. Wow… talk about a different world that was… For as stable as the cat was, even in a pretty good wind, the Sunfish seemed ultra sensitive and tippy with just a moderate breeze. It didn’t help that the wind was shifting a lot, but I had major control problems on this one. The mainsheet was down through a single ratchet block (very nice how those work) but there was no cleat or anyplace to tie it off requiring me to hold the sheet all the time in one hand and the rudder in the other. With no way to heave to without a jib, again with the shifting and changing wind (lull to good blow in a few seconds) I couldn’t really just let out the sheet to let the sail luff, it kept coming around on me. I finally had to settle for sailing into a quiet spot to make some adjustments.
That was a much less enjoyable sail, but after 15 minutes or so I finally got the hang of it. I’ve seen pictures on the internet with 3-4 people in a Sunfish and I just cannot imagine how that would work. I can see where it would be a very fast boat in a good wind, but it seemed more like what I would expect wind surfing to be than sailing. Of course I've never tried wind surfing so it's easy for me to make that comparison.
Having survived and retaining my no spills record (but very very close on the SunFish), I’m back now in the cold and snow of Minnesota, and the countdown is on until Ice-Out in early April, then I can get back out in my old but much more now appreciated, DaySailer. Com'on spring