A brisk Windy sail
04 July 2012 | Lac Deschenes Ottawa
Gord
Well, Tom & I went out again this past weekend, rock & roll. The winds must have been close to 20 knots. We had just the main up and had the boat up to 5.9 knots, quite a day out, loads of fun, I'm just glad Jen didn't decide to come out.
We also decided to practice Crew Over Board (COB) drills, we had Tom's nephew on board, but we couldn't persuade him to jump, so we settled for Mr. Life Jacket.
It took a couple tries to get the technique down, but we both managed to pick him up. What we found interesting is that during our courses they teach COB and all goes well, but it is usually in the extreme conditions that someone might go over. We had quite the difficult time in the conditions. With just the main up it was difficult to tack in a circle (we used the triangle method) to go downwind. Then it was hard to slow the boat down enough to be able to recover the COB without ripping an arm out of the socket, timing is everything.
This is something everyone should practice many times over.