Lord of the Flies

It's a beautiful day for a sail!

We woke up on Memorial Day after spending the first night on the boat and it was bright and sunny in Chicago! Finally!! After running a few errands, and learning a few things like: 1. run out when we first wake up to beat beach traffic, 2. use the Wilson exit on Lake Shore Drive instead of Montrose and 3. our harbor lot pass is a HUGE perk. (Parking in and around Montrose harbor after 10 am seems to be almost non existent.) We were finally ready to take full advantage of the first beautiful day of the boating season! After checking the weather and watching other boats we noticed that the winds were a bit strong and from the South for a change. We unfortunately watched a neighbor crash into another boat, he broke his front lights because he ran right into the boat next to his, while pulling out of his dock. We believe this happened because of the wind and we realized we could have easily have had the same problem. So we took note of the wind and talked though our exit strategy and when we felt confident enough we pushed off our dock.

As soon as we were off the dock the wind was coming off our starboard side pushing the bow of the boat north, this wouldn't have been a big problem if we wanted to head that direction. However we have to head south to leave our dock and then turn east to head out of the harbor. Thankfully we tweaked our reverse a few weeks ago and we were able to maneuver the boat without hitting anything or anyone without a problem. Once we were out of the harbor we headed almost due west for about a mile, to clear all of the boat traffic, before putting up the sails. It was my turn to hoist the sails on that outing and I was able to get the main sail up without help! That's a first! After unrolling the jib we were crusing at a steady pace of 6.7 knots.

This picture does not do our fly
infestation justice. Took this picture right
after Brady swatted the area

We were just about to break out lunch, some sandwiches and Coronas, when we were attacked by hundreds of stable flies, this unfortunately is NOT an exaggeration. In just a few short seconds we were being eaten alive by these flies! And it hurt. Bad. Learning more about these insects when we got back on land we found out that they fly from place to place a few miles off shore and if you sail or boat into them they land on you to rest and it seems, to eat you. Because of these pesty insects our relaxing day cruise turned into us jokingly throwing away our sailing dreams in about 2.5 seconds. A few hours into the sail, after trying to win the battle of the flies we gave up and called a truce. We let the flies win, turned on Artie, our auto pilot and sat in the windiest part of the cockpit trying to ignore the flies and enjoy our sail.

About a third of the way to Michigan (it took about 2 hours, we are sorry that we haven't been turning on our SPOT) we decided to turn around and head back to Chicago. (We are hoping to get our past routes of our sails from our GPS and post them soon. When we have another BIG adventure we will make sure to turn it on so you can track our progress. This will happen soon because we have a week vacation coming up at the end of June! Yeah!) Soon after we started to head back we noticed that the wind had increased significantly and we were speeding along for a while, it was fun! That is until the winds got too strong. Quickly the fun turned into fear and we realized we should have been sailing with a reefed main, a technique used in strong winds which requires you to lower the main sail to reduce the area of the sail so you can sail safely. Everyone tells you that when you think it's time to reef your sail, well, it should have been done a while before you thought it should. By the time we thought we should reef, it was too late.

We first lowered the jib to help gain more control of the boat and slow us down. By the time we started to lower the main to reef it, well that is when we heard an awful noise. I was too afraid to go up to the bow and lower the sail so I took the wheel. When you lower or hoist your sails, you want the bow of the boat to be pointed directly into the wind because these tasks are easier to accomplish without the wind pushing against them. Since I have not yet steered Further through 'big' (for us) waves, I didn't know how to hold her steady and had a very rough time keeping her pointed directly into the wind while the waves were pushing us every which way. While this was going on our main sail, which had been taking a beating all day, finally gave way and ripped (hence the awful noise mentioned above). Brady heroically wrestled the sail down, which was a feat in itself since after tearing it was now flapping in the wind chaotically, and secured it so we could safely motor back to the harbor.

Our ripped main sail

Now the reality of docking the boat in high winds was setting in. (To read about how we describe docking a boat see our previous post.) We have successfully docked Further in good weather but we have never docked her during high winds. Picture you're driving in your car on the highway in high winds, your car can sway a bit but you can control it so it doesn't go into the next lane. This is not the case with a boat. We need to compensate high winds by turning early or late,  or doing whatever is needed to get you where you want to go because the wind will push you off course. We were going with the wind so we figured that we would have to turn into our spot early because the wind will push us the rest of the way. Well, unfortunately all of our neighbors were already back because of the strong winds watching us dock. Fortunately they were there ready to help us as much as they could.

Even with all of our helpful neighbors there to assist us the wind was too great that day and we didn't turn in early enough.  This caused us to drift downwind as we came into our slip and ended up grazing the corner of our dock leaving a nice  little scuff mark on Further's port side. However all of our fellow neighbors were there and I believe without their help we would have done a bit more damage to the boat. Feeling like crap because we didn't dock perfectly one neighbor informed us that our damage wasn't bad at all and that other boats had a lot worse damage done to them while docking in this weather.  We took a beating that day and it is going to be hard to 'jump back on the horse' after this experience.

However after tying the boat down and cracking a few cold ones to calm our nerves we discussed what we did wrong and how we can do better next time and this is what we came up with.

Lessons learned from today's sail (continued from the above lessons listed):
4. When you THINK you need to reef, you should have reefed a long time before that - so you better do it NOW!

5. CONSTANTLY check the weather. It can change very quickly and you don't want to be caught in a bad or dangerous situation.

6. Always, always, ALWAYS dock INTO the wind (not against it as we did this day).

Because we were able to sit down and discuss each fault clearly and in a calm manner, without blaming or faulting one another, I believe this experience will not only make us better sailors but better our relationship as well. Communication and confidence are key and these are the main reasons why we had such big problems. (Big for us right now, we know there is a lot more that can and probably will go wrong as we spend more time out in the water). I froze and didn't tell Brady that I wasn't comfortable going up to the mast and reefing, this wasted valuable seconds that could have possibly saved our main sail. Also, we knew that you should always dock into the wind but we weren't confident that we could pull off a 180° turn at the end of our dock plus we were second guessing ourselves the entire way into the harbor. Things are going to happen,  some amazing, some worth not writing about and some that we wish hadn't happened at all, but it is the latter that will make us better. And this is why we are doing what we are doing, to always strive to be better. Better people, friends, partners, co-workers, family members, sailors and doing this will allow us to go further.