My First Sail

Well I survived the first day of sailing…

The thing was we didn’t actually sail all that much, we motored most of the way… into the wind… while the boat was rocking and rolling… it was a rough day.

The weather forecast said that there would be about 14 knots of wind blowing northwest… that was quite possibly the least favorable wind ever.  For starters for anyone who has never sailed in their life, you cannot sail into the wind.  It’s physically impossible.  Your sails get all loose and you don’t actually go anywhere.  In fact the best way to stop a boat, if someone falls overboard or any other circumstance where you would need to halt the movement of a sailboat would be to put it into the wind.  So we are going south… to have the wind blowing north means we were going into the wind the entire way.  So right away we knew we would have to turn the engine on for the 32 mile trip to Nettuno from Rome.   Not ideal, but because we have somewhat of a schedule to keep, we decided to just do it.  The next ok weather day wouldn’t be until Thursday, and that was 2 days from when we left so that would’ve put us even farther behind schedule.  So the decision was made – we were going.

We went down below and stowed everything to the best of our ability… or so we thought and closed all of the hatches.  How bad can it get really?

Worse than we thought.  Now to those brave souls who crossed the Atlantic in the Pipedream are going to roll their eyes and laugh at what I am about to say.  Those veteran sailor friends of my Dad’s just ignore this section because you too will roll your eyes and chuckle.  To anyone who has ever gotten sea sick, has never been on a boat, or at least hasn’t in the last decade (this is my category) this is your chance to sympathize with me. 

I turned green.  I do not have an iron clad stomach and that trip made me turn a shade of green I didn’t know existed… on top of taking a Dramamine about a half an hour before we even left the dock.  It was less than pleasant. 

When going against the wind, you don’t only lose speed (we averaged at about 2.5 – 3 knots the entire way) but you also crash into the waves instead of riding them.  This creates a bumpy jolting feeling of the front to back motion.  Then on top of that… without the sail up your boat is essentially a toy for the sea to play with.  So there is also the side to side rolling.  It felt very much like the Dinosaur ride at Animal Kingdom… that rocky jolting everyway your body can move feeling, for about 10 hours.  On the ride though you aren’t supposed to stand up.  On a sail boat you are required to not only stand up, but make your way to the mast so you can put up the sail which includes unhook straps around the sail, pulling ropes, making sure nothing is caught so the sail can go up.  We did put up the mainsail because it cuts back on the rocking and rolling from side to side.  Something about when the wind puts pressure on the sail it gives the keel a break and keeps it from being so affected by the sea.  There was a point when that was helping a lot and I was sitting on the stern of the boat in the open air watching the solid land where I didn’t feel terrible.  That moment took about 4 hours to reach and lasted for about 2… it was great then.  Then the swells started picking up to what Dad was averaging about 4ft and I had to use the restroom. 

Again this is where the veterans laugh in my face… what an experience.  Going down below after everything we thought we had stowed away nicely had fallen and was rolling from one side of the boat to the other and trying to make it to the bathroom without running into anything, tripping on anything, or seriously hurting yourself.  I made it, I am proud to say, and I held on while using the bathroom, and then had to figure out how to get my pants back on while using one hand so the other one could hold on and balancing at the same time.  This is also where I got that great green color back in my face until we pulled into the port.

Docking was a new experience.  Everyone in Europe backs their boats into the spots and they really pack them in here.  The ideal docking – there is a line attached to the dock and to a concrete block that runs along underwater where the bow of the boat goes.  You back the boat in and the person in the stern grabs that line from the dock with the boat hook.  They then follow it down to the front of the boat where it is tied to the boat and thus serves as a break system to keep the boat from backing into the dock.  Then there are two lines at the bow of the boat that are tied to the dock to keep it from going too far forward.  In theory it makes sense and it keeps the boat stationary and allows for more boats to fit into the marina.  In reality it’s scary and hard.

Our boat does not have bow thrusters.  So when it is in reverse, we have no control.  The spot they wanted to put us was between two boats, and didn’t look big enough for a small sized car, let alone a boat of our size.  But we began to back in and realized that the traditional way of docking was not going to work and was going to cause a lot more damage than it was worth.  So we did something that is generally frowned upon we stuck our hands out and fended off of the other boats, “walking” ours into its spot by pushing against the other ones and easing it in.  The guy at the dock that worked at the marina saw us trying to back it in using the engine and ran away for help… or so he didn’t have to be a witness of the disaster that was about to take place.  I think he was shocked when he finally returned and the boat was where it was supposed to be, basically kissing the boats next to ours.  We managed to put it in a spot, find the bow line and follow it up to stop and secure the boat, and I was able to climb off of the stern, land on the dock and tie the stern off.  All without hurting anyone or the boat.   I was pretty impressed with our docking… it was terrifying and like I said unorthodox, but we did it as a crew. 

I found that Dad is human too and not in favor of making ourselves sick like that either which gave me a wave of relief when I was thinking about how sick I was going to be for the next 9 months – a year.  I would also like to say that he is a patient captain.  I still have a lot to learn and while I am eager and a fast learner, he is being patient and going over things numerous times so it sinks in with me.  For this I am grateful.

We didn’t do too much damage down below.  Dad caught that the hatches weren’t as tight as they should be about 10 minutes into the rough sail so he was able to tighten and we kept most of the water out.  The front hatch that tends to get the most water and is over my bed leaks, but there is a plastic tarp I put over the bed, so it stayed dry and like I said there was a lot rolling around, but we cleaned it up and didn’t damage anything too bad.  Overall it was a successful sail… the crew was exhausted and I am still moving, but that’s step one to getting over sea sickness so bring it on.

The contents of the closet spilled out into the walkway that led to my bunk.  We also lost some spices and found a canned steak in the engine hold...