Phillipe gains experience …Part 1

By Gordon Phillipe

Large sea creatures, mechanical failure, berg winds.

 We were discussing. Phillipe and I, what would happen if it got dark before the wind came up as we were sitting motionless in the middle of False Bay on a Saturday afternoon when suddenly two whales surfaced not far away heading towards us at a fair lick.  

It is moments like these when you realize how helpless you are. What do you do when confronted by a couple of mammoths from the deep. Do they know you are in their way? Should you make a noise to let them know? Are they likely to jump out of the water and land on top of you and sink you without a trace? Or come up underneath and flap their tail and send you flying? 

Start your engine I hear you say which is what I would have done except that my 22 year old Mariner which had hung on the transom of Smidgin for all that time, except when it spent a few days submerged when the bracket broke, had decided to call it a day and with what sounded like a fart had expired. It reminded me of an old character I once knew in Ireland whose philosophy on life was that we were all just farts blowing in the wind. 

So we were at the mercy of these leviathans and had to hope that they were not maladjusted with a chip on their barnacled shoulders. 

Smidgin is a Holiday 23 and we had left Gordons Bay for Simonstown earlier expecting it to take around 5 hours for the trip. Phillipe who had recently become the proud owner of a Holiday 23 wanted to gain experience and had asked me if he could come along and as I had not found anyone to come with me I was glad to have him along. He told me that he had a Day Skipper certificate from a sailing school but when he did the course the sailing part consisted of motoring up the coast to Saldhana as there was no wind. I wondered what you learn on a course like that… how to tie knots, what the ropes are called, not to fall in the water. 

Another two whales had surfaced also heading towards us. 

Seal Island was also not far away and the swell of the ocean was gently moving us towards it. I thought this was a good time to illustrate to Phillipe how the most innocuous situations in sailing can turn life threatening, here we were a painted ship upon a painted ocean about to be either flattened by a whale or wrecked on a rocky shore surrounded by great white sharks. 

I could sense a bit of nervousness in Phillipe’s demeanor and it didn’t help that his wife, who was waiting for him at Simonstown, kept SMSing him wanting to know what was keeping him.  

I’m a great believer in fate and my mother always told me ‘when your time comes your time comes’ so I waited and suddenly a little zephyr of wind wafted into the sails and Smidgin started to move and the whales like elephants in the bush were gone and the noise of the surf breaking on Seal Island started to recede. 

Under the number 1 and full main Smidgin glided effortlessly on her way….. Phillipe and I were feeling much better as we could start to see the houses above the harbour more clearly it wouldn’t be long before we would be in  …. who needs a smelly engine anyway….. and this would have been the end of the story except that as often happens when you go sailing the unexpected happens.

I don’t know what made me do it but I happened to look behind and coming silently towards us was a line of white caps… we were about to be klapped. Very casually I said to Phillipe if he could steer I would drop the jib. I went forward and as I let the halyard go the first gust hit us Smidgin who is quite tender heeled over rather dramatically and Phillipe suddenly looked a bit startled…. anyway he was starting to get experience. 

A front was forecast but was not expected until much later this was a warm berg wind which we were not expecting. I put up the number 3 and with full main I thought we should be comfortable the wind was northerly and we had to beat to get to Simonstown. But it wasn’t long before we were getting overpowered as the wind grew quickly and the sea was starting to build.  

To reduce sail further the choice was to put on the number 4 or to reef, as Phillipe was unfamiliar with the boat and would not be able to steer in the conditions I thought the best solution would be to reef, so I briefed Phillipe on how to do this and he went forward. By this time the wind was gusting up to 35 knots and the sea was getting bigger all the time. If you have not reefed before it is not easy in those conditions and eventually I realized that it was not going to work so I shouted at Phillipe to lower the main and make it fast and we would sail on the jib alone.

I learnt a lot on the beat to Simonstown I have sailed Smidgin for 22 years but I learnt new things about her on that beat. At stages I wondered if we would make it as the waves were pushing us off. If we could get enough forward motion she would point up. If the jib was pulled in tight when we tacked her bow fell away and she lay over and went sideways, so on tacking we did not pull the jib in fully until she got moving forward then we tried to get the jib in. We also tacked up the shore where the waves were smaller. In the lulls I found that she was pushed off by the waves and would not point, she needed enough wind to give her momentum to point into the waves. 

It took us two hours to get up to Simonstown against the berg wind and as we rounded the harbour wall and headed towards the marina the wind dropped. We drifted into the marina where we were met by a welcoming party who wanted to know what took us so long we had taken 9 hours to get across from Gordons Bay. I actually think we can take longer and maybe there should be a challenge cup for the longest trip! 

Phillipe got a lot more experience than he did on his course and he started to feel a bit less nervous when he saw how a Holiday 23 copes in adverse conditions. However this was just the start of Phillipe’s education as we had gone to Simonstown to sail in the Spring Regatta. 

‘Broaching as a racing technique or how to maintain your course while standing on the keel’ tells the story of the Spring Regatta, coming soon.