My prior post discussed how sailing can enthrall us with beauty, discomfort us, punish us, slam us around, and even injure us. But that's not all.
Sailing can wear us out. We work, we toil when we sail, and when conditions are harder, we toil harder.
The graphic above shows the track of S/V Ubiquity several days ago sailing north through the Canal de Cerralvo (the Cerralvo Channel). Sailors dread the Cerralvo Channel for its strong winds, seas, and currents. The old U.S. Sailing Directions publication advised not to attempt the channel in a headwind. But the zigzag course of Ubiquity's track tells any sailor that Ubiquity was sailing against a headwind, because tacking, zigzaging, is how sailboats progress upwind.
That track represents hours of sailing: at first easy, then becoming rough against increasingly strong winds and seas in the worst part of the channel, then gradually easier. When the wind increased into the 20's and the seas steepened, S/V Ubiquity punched through the rough seas with a reefed main and a reefed headsail, healed far over, spray coming off the bow and over the whole boat. But even with the rough seas against her, slamming her with steep waves to try to stop her, she could make four knots or more. Four knots or more sailing, not motoring. Motoring she might average a knot against such seas, stopped by the impact of each wave. Ubiquity's designer, William Crealock, designed her as a cruising sailboat that in rough conditions can harness the power of the wind (increasing fourfold with each doubling of wind speed), heal over as if gripping the sea, and slice through the tempestuous water with her v-shaped hull.
Here is a graphic showing Ubiquity's tracks years ago sailing up the Principe Channel, British Columbia, just south of Alaska.
Here is a second graphic. Those tracks represent a day's work of tacking, zigzagging.
Few do this kind of sailing and few would want to do it, especially in rough conditions - tacking back and forth circuitously, healed over, punished if conditions are rough.
It's work, toil, the toil of sailing.