Missus and I went sailing yesterday. Virtually no breeze 5 Knts ?. "What a useless sailing day"Says I.
"No probs"says Missus " I'll nick down and make us a coffee". So she does.
All the canvas was out and at least we were making headway.
We get to the top end of Pittwater and things suddenly change. out of nowhere the breeze increases
to 15 knts and quickly increases to 20+.
Now I know all of you blokes would quickly spring up on to the cabin top and put in a reef. But that's
not really what I can do....So, what to do ??. The safest thing would be to drop all sail. But what am I
sailing for, if all I want to do is be safe!!.
I know my boat pretty well by now and the thing that powers her is the headsail 150%.
So I says to Missus, "Here Darl, take a couple of turns off the headsail sheet winch and pay out while I
wind in the furler". I bought her closer to the wind to depower the sail and we did just that.
So I wound her in to about 60% cleated the sheet and we sailed on that trim for rest of the day. Mind you
when sailing downwind the headsail just flapped about, so I furled it and just used the mainsail.
So what did I do right.????