I spent all of last week racing sailboats in the Melges 24 World Championships here in Santa Cruz. We sucked! We had a terribly hard time with our setup and were pretty slow as compared to everyone else and didn’t really get it together until the last 2 days. On the last day of the event it was all on as the wind was gusting to 35mph. It was pure survival conditions! 19 of the 58 boats that started didn't finish. 5 boats dropped their mast and there were many other equipment failures as well. We had just set our spinnaker at the weather mark and had taken off on a wave when a massive gust of wind hit us from behind, popped our spin. halyard out of the cleat, released 10 to 15 feet of that halyard, re-cleated itself causing the core of the halyard to strip from the cover. What this all means is that we crashed in a most violent way. As we were lying on our sides with the mast in the water trying to recover, our mast and rig were being flogged unmercifully by the wind. I thought for
sure we were going to lose our rig! After 2 or 3 minutes on our side, we were finally able to take the spinnaker down. All four of us really wanted to reset the spinnaker (there is no better way to drain your adrenal gland while planning at almost 20 knots in a 24 foot boat in 30 plus knots of wind and 10 foot seas), but we were afraid the spinnaker halyard had been damage to the point that we could reset the spinnaker, but it might be impossible to get it down. While we debated this fact we were still planning while going down wind with just the main and jib alone. There was a boat next to us when suddenly the driver does a back flip out of the boat and into the water. We without debate or hesitation went into rescue mode. We furled the jib sailed over to swimmer and did a text book rescue. It was like we had practice this maneuver for weeks. The guy who churned out to be French wasn’t in the water for more than 1 minute! When then tried to hail the Race Committee on our handheld VHF to inform them on what had happened, but our power must have been low as we could hear them, but they couldn’t hear us. To make a long story short, we were able to put the French fellow back on his boat after a hairy sailboat to sailboat transfer. We decided enough was enough and headed to the harbor. T
he conditions were so brutal that the Race Committee abandoned the last race and the regatta was over. We didn’t place that well in the overall results, but all four of us had a really great time!
sure we were going to lose our rig! After 2 or 3 minutes on our side, we were finally able to take the spinnaker down. All four of us really wanted to reset the spinnaker (there is no better way to drain your adrenal gland while planning at almost 20 knots in a 24 foot boat in 30 plus knots of wind and 10 foot seas), but we were afraid the spinnaker halyard had been damage to the point that we could reset the spinnaker, but it might be impossible to get it down. While we debated this fact we were still planning while going down wind with just the main and jib alone. There was a boat next to us when suddenly the driver does a back flip out of the boat and into the water. We without debate or hesitation went into rescue mode. We furled the jib sailed over to swimmer and did a text book rescue. It was like we had practice this maneuver for weeks. The guy who churned out to be French wasn’t in the water for more than 1 minute! When then tried to hail the Race Committee on our handheld VHF to inform them on what had happened, but our power must have been low as we could hear them, but they couldn’t hear us. To make a long story short, we were able to put the French fellow back on his boat after a hairy sailboat to sailboat transfer. We decided enough was enough and headed to the harbor. T
he conditions were so brutal that the Race Committee abandoned the last race and the regatta was over. We didn’t place that well in the overall results, but all four of us had a really great time!
