I’m (unseen) on the leeward (port) side fighting the foresail. I was trimming that day. I can tell you, I was getting wet…soaking damn wet…almost knocked off the boat wet, and I was wearing a harness. This was a fast and powerful boat, and she would take everything out of you. As you can see, we had some “meat” on the high side, but not enough. She would take you all the way to your limits. Masthead rig, as opposed to Fractional. All said and done, we had ten of us on her, and we couldn’t tame her. When we popped the chute downwind, it was all about hanging on and watching everything. It was a small boat, a Wavelength 30, but she had a temper. I’m telling you, it took at least ten people to calm her down in a good blow, but she would haul ass if you treated her right, and got her balanced out. Hell, I guess she had too much sail, or we flew too much sail. Probably the latter.
Anyway, we took some girlie girls for a ride on occasion…they did not come back for more, none of ‘em. They said that (and we were) was fucking crazy, and couldn’t possibly believe anyone would want to do that. One of ‘em once, needed some stitches, and we were going to sew her up…and she flipped all the way out. I mean she really lost her shit…couldn’t stand the sight of her blood. Went absolutely ballistic on us. Hell, one of the crew was a MD, doing his internship at a local hospital in the emergency room…he knew how to clean and sew. Never saw her again. I think she was a tad bit traumatized, but she did go get some stitches at a hospital. It was just her hand.
I wouldn’t know, but I’ve been told that riding a sailboat in a good blow in like riding a wild ass bronco. I’ve never ridden a bull, but I’ve ridden some sailboats that made me want to talk to The Maker.
This picture doesn’t do her justice, but it’s the only one I can find right now.
Too much fun…I still loves me some VOODOO.
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Any woman who can’t stand the sight of her own blood…well, nevermind.
And I love voodoo too, just not the kind on water.
I guess I could’ve worded it a little differently, didn’t think about it, being boy dog and all. Did you know that boat names with double O’s are supposed to bring luck? That’s why the next one was named VOODOOTOO. I kid you not.
I would have come back, but only to watch from the jetty
Nah, if you’d have come back, you’d have climbed aboard.
Dude, I would be puking everywhere. Trust me: y’all woulda left me on the jetty
I crewed on small , fresh water PHRF shit for a long time. Lots of J-24s and J-29s, Catalinas, Starwinds, S2 7.9s, Merits, etc. etc. Everybody wanted a big goon like me on the fore deck so the wife and kids could stay on the beach. It was easy to get rides with the weekend warriors and their shiny big boy toys once they knew you knew the difference between a topping lift and spinnaker guy.
Did some fair to middling fore decking and grinding on the Gulf…..a Soverel 30 and later a 33 both owned by the same guy. The 33 rated ….like 86, I think, and was a complete blood bath in anything above 15 kts. I had never seen so much running rigging since the Lightning I sailed a few times.
The biggest boat I have ever had under my feet was a Beneteau First 42. Bad ass boat. How the rig loading skyrocketed over the little boats just floored me. That thing could straight tear hands and feet off if you didn’t have your head out of your ass.
But the worst I have ever had my ass kicked was always dinghy and cat sailing. There were a couple of times I thought my old Laser was going to kill me before I got back to the beach, but boy was that thing fun.
Me and lifeguard dude were paralleling the beach one winter day on my old NACRA 5.8, about 3 miles offshore, I guess, on a broad port side spinnaker reach just flying. Dagger boards and rudders are just humming like hell and the dagger boards are shooting water a couple of feet out of the board trunks. We’re all trapped out and grinning like two frozen idiots should be on an A ticket ride. Cool thing about the symmetrical NACRA’s is you could really push your luck on the leeward hull. I could get the hull submerged to the first cross bar before it really parked itself and tried to kill you.
So anyway, we are totally hauling the mail and hooting and hollering and just having a ball. No one around for miles and the spinnaker is popping and lipping and we are both crammed so far back on the windward hull to try to keep the nose up that I have my right foot on the rudder bracket.
Port side shroud parts and the whole shooting match goes ass over teakettle. I just dug in and stopped. It was violent, you can believe that. Took dude a full five minutes to untangle himself from the rig, which is now detached from the mast step and perpendicular to the bows of the upside down hulls. He got kinda trebucheted forward of the mast and somehow I managed to stay behind the main.
Anyway, we got it righted and got the rig out of the water and got the sails out of the water and managed to save all the parts. We got everything lashed down and cleaned every thing up so we could start paddling back to the beach. Dude lays on one hull forward of the first crossbar and I lay on the other and we stroke this broken pile of bullshit back to the beach. We paddle for two solid hours. A simple triangulation from a few points on the beach indicated we were going backwards.
Long story short, given the winds and tides that afternoon, if it hadn’t been for that cat who just happened to be ferrying a J-35 back to the coast from Lake Ponchartrain, we probably would have kept drifting south and eventually died of exposure.
Dumb ass luck has kept me out of the grave yard many times.
I’ve done a lot of J-24 work myself. Love those boats, especially if you can get ‘em planning downwind and see the rooster tail. Too cool. Hell, the damn things will almost plane to weather. Also did a lot of Lightning ans Thistle work. Pitch-polled a n once, it was damn cold, hypothermia cold, and I had to be rescued by a mark boat. Those NACRA’s are cool cats, been on a few, bust most of my trapeze thrill was on Hobie’s. I’m with you, luck has saved me many times.