Hunter 216
Captain: Paul Ritchie
Crew: Mike Maddox
Crew: David Sears

This started out looking like the prefect day for the Hunter beast to trounce those pesky little boats. Wind speed and course looked like the Hunter would have an almost unfair advantage…not that I want an unfair advantage…NOT! In a 10-12 mph wind, the wind is not strong enough to plane the small guys so we are all maxed out at hull speed. Course, because the Hunter beast has a longer waterline (and an even longer “virtual” waterline due to the hull design), our hull speed is higher. We are slower with the main and jib most of the time but haul ass with the asym spinnaker so the more we can fly the spinnaker the better. Because of the squished “U” shape of the course and the direction of the wind, I was hoping to be able to fly the spinnaker on both the long legs plus 2 out of the 4 short legs. That is, except for a couple short legs, I could haul ass with the spinnaker…I hoped…the wind direction had to be just right to do this but it was shaping up nicely.

I had visions of the attractive bonze turkey head perpetual trophy gracing my fireplace mantel.

We were second to start with the reverse Portsmouth start…starting 11:07 minutes after Dave/Jody in Dave’s Windmill. I decided to let David drive while Mike and I shared mainsheet trimmer/bowman duties. I had made changes to the spinnaker rigging and wanted to personally test them. Got the boat wet, crew raised the main (jib still furled as is my wont), I kicked the bow out and jumped aboard. Note the wind was blowing at 90 degrees to the dock towards one of the shores and was now starting to whitecap. Started hauling in the mainsheet while David pointed up. Started to catch the wind and I hauled in more mainsheet. All of a sudden the main came fluttering back down!!!!! Gar!!!! I suggested to Mike that he pull on the main halyard (I said this in a reasonably loud voice to make sure he heard me over the wind) and raise the main back up. He pointed out that this would do no good as the shackle tying the halyard to the main had separated! We had made maybe 75’ – 100’ away from the dock.

Dang, I knew we were in immediate trouble with a kickin’ wind driving us right towards shore. Panic. Adrenalin woke me up quite nicely, thank you. I scrambled for the gas line for the motor…got it partway out then realized I didn’t have enough time to get the gas line AND get the motor deployed so asked Mike to get the gas line and went back to deploy the motor. Got the motor dropped, gas line attached, and pulled the rope. Naturally I had forgotten the choke. Choked it and pulled the rope. Naturally I had forgotten to disable the kill switch so did that. Pulled rope twice and had power. POWER! By now the boat is almost on the shore.

Meantime David/Mike are trying to deploy the jib so we can sail on jib alone. They get the jib unfurled and starting to catch wind about the same time I get the motor going. (Bear in mind we are only talking a very short timeframe here. Probably somewhere between 1-2 minutes from losing the main to running aground.) The bow is heading towards shore (in the Hunter beast, the wind blows the bow down quite easily) so I cram it in reverse, turn the motor in the desired direction, and goose it. Meantime David/Mike are trying to turn going forward seeing as the jib does not have a reverse gear! That is, the jib is starting to drive forward and David had the tiller over hard in one direction. Meantime I am in reverse with the motor pointing in the opposite direction of the tiller. Gad, what a bunch of keystone cops! When I realize what is going on, I flip the motor to “go fast” forward, lay it off in David’s direction, grab the tiller and shove it really hard over. The trees are within sniffing distance and the water is shallow.

Looks like we might pull it off when the keel goes GRIND, GRIND, GRIND, KLUMP as it goes over something then drops back down. Then another GRIND, GRIND, KLUMP and we are free. I’m not fond of the strain on my boat when my 500 pounds of lead in the keel goes KLUMP! Later analysis reveals that we bisected a buoy then dragged over the cable tying the buoys together. Thank goodness it didn’t get the rudder as it breaks much more easily than the keel and just looks mighty expensive.

Now under control we all breath a sigh of relief and discuss our options. I suggest we could take a late start if David wanted to climb the mast and retrieve the halyard. He declined for some weird reason I still do not fathom. With the wind and the porta potti on board I didn’t think we stood much chance of laying it over on it’s side at the dock and retrieving the halyard so we decided to pack it in. Let’s see: 1 hour setup, 47 seconds of sailing, 1 our knockdown…Hmmm…

Oh, I now have an expensive snap shackle at the working end of the halyard instead of the piece of dog doo supplied by the manufacturer.