by GreenLake » Mon Aug 22, 2016 10:16 am
This is very puzzling.
You see, when you sail in a current (such as the tide), there really isn't any difference in how the boat should behave.
Well, two.
First, the wind you feel on the boat will be the same as it would be on standing water, except that the speed (and direction) of the current is added to it - if wind and current go together, then you add, if they oppose, you subtract their speeds. At other angles you get a shift in both speed and direction of the resulting wind. However, at all moments you are sailing in that resulting wind (and if true wind and current are constant, so is the resulting wind).
In other words, you sail in the wind you feel (or can measure on board) and without observing the land, you, or your DS, can't tell there's current. That means, if you were unable to turn, it wasn't due to the tide, but some other effect, and we'd need to find out what was different that one time.
I promised two differences: the second one has to do with speed over ground. That one is affected by the current. If the current is strong enough, you may end up sailing in place. That happened to me once in a small boat. I had good wind, but it was in line with the tide. So to sail against the tide, I had to tack. While I was making good progress through the water (sailing the resulting wind), because of tacking, the velocity made good in the upwind direction just about equaled the rate at which the tidal current swept me downwind.
What looked like beautifully executed tacks on the water, were really 180 degree tacks over ground!
I sailed like that for an hour or two before deciding there was no point to that exercise. Luckily by simply extending one of the tacks I could reach the shore, so I just beached the boat and called for someone to come pick me up.
So, I can certainly empathize with your worries about not making it back.
However, I had no difficulties tacking that day, and had somebody taken the picture of my wake on the water, if would have looked no different from a wake in standing water.
So, to get back to your experience: I'm having a hard time connecting your inability to tack to the current. Especially, since you had good wind (8-10) and apparently enough to easily sail back once you made your turn.
I was out on a lake in Italy one year in another small boat, and we had been sailing downwind to check on some monastery built into a cliff. When it came time to turn around, my friend told me: the rudder isn't working, I can't turn. And proceeded to demonstrate it. Bad news as we were being blown onto the rocks. Luckily, that boat had an open CB well, not a closed trunk like the DS, so as I was looking around for a paddle, I noticed the CB had come up. Pushing that down again did the trick.
Now, you don't say whether you were tacking, or perhaps just reaching up and down along the coast (with the wind coming from offshore). If the latter, then you might easily sail with a CB that's partially raised, but might have a tough time executing a tack.
One trick you might try in doing a tack would be to let the jib stay on the original side a little longer. First, the jib will continue to provide power a good bit into the turn. Eventually it will "backwind" if you don't release it. A backwinded jib, however, does push the bow into the direction that you want to turn. So you can use that to help the bow come around and release the jib only when you have almost completed the tack.
Another thing to watch out for is how hard you pull the tiller over. If you turn too hard, it's like pulling a brake. The rudder blade will move sideways through the water. So the aim is to initiate the turn with a firm, but limited deflection of the rudder. Because a DS, in the right circumstances, can pivot around the CB, your tack may become not so much a gentle U curve through the water, but a pirouette. In that case, the stern will sweep sideways a bit, and you can deflect that rudder a bit more. (Try letting go of the tiller in the middle of a practice tack, to see how the rudder aligns itself almost at right angles - once the boat spins into the turn).
If you can rule out the CB, and handled jib and tiller to your best advantage, I don't know what else to suggest. You may not have had your main tight enough? A tight main will help turn a boat upwind. Normally, if you tack from a close-hauled course, that's not an issue, but if you were reaching up and down, making 180 degree turns instead of 90 degree ones, you may have had your main pretty loose. And if your were taking your tacks fairly slowly, the main would stop pulling pretty early in the turn (and also not pushing the bow upwind).
~ green ~ lake ~ ~