| Let’s
assume we’re going lobstering. Let’s assume you are meeting
me at Gloucester’s Saint Peter’s Square public landing at
9:00a.m. on a typical Massachusetts summer day. When you get there,
you see that my kids and I have brought CHRISSY in from her mooring,
backed her in alongside the float, and picked up some bait for our
trip.
"Welcome
aboard," I say as I see you coming down the gangway. I gesture
you into the Friendship sloop’s commodious cockpit. Next comes
your introduction to the crew: "This is my son Alden; he is
seven." Alden nods. "And my daughter Perry; she is four."
She covers her face with her blanket and giggles. Then, while I
give you the safety rundown, telling you the location of the toilet
and lifejackets, etc., Perry goes up forward, sets CHRISSY’s
staysail and coils up the halyard. Meanwhile, Alden takes in the
lines and gives us a shove, letting the morning north-westerly take
us down Harbor Cove. On the way out, as we pull the stops and quarter
straps off the mainsail, we point out the different types of boats
in our modern fishing fleet.
|
|
| As
we get into a little more open water off the Cape Pond Ice factory,
we will lay CHRISSY to in preparation for raising the main. "Lay
to" means stop, side to the wind; to execute this maneuver we
just sheet in the staysail and throw the rudder up. Although we could
lay to on either tack, this time we will turn to port, away from Cape
Pond Ice. What happens then is that CHRISSY comes around to a heading
about seven points off the wind and just sits there, pointed toward
the Coast Guard station. Because CHRISSY’s mast is located far
forward on her hull, she cannot come through the wind without a good
deal of headway and, as we have slowed her in our turn, she will never
make it. At the same time, she cannot fall off either, because as
her staysail fills, it starts her moving slowly ahead, rounding her
up, and spilling wind from the staysail. So with no other options,
CHRISSY just sits there awaiting our next move, which in this case
will be to raise the main. Before we do this, we let the mainsheet
run all the way out so that as we raise the sail with the boom broad
off, it will just luff rather than fill and round us up. |
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