Originally published on Sydney RAID Facebook Group 26 February 2017. Above image from video by Peter Green.

I got there a bit late (about as late as if I’d been perfectly on time, and then idiotically got stuck in the lane that took me into the M5 tunnel westbound, necessitating a U-turn through a Kingsgrove petrol station, with a boat trailer and a second trip through the tunnel – but only about that late).

The wind was approaching 20 knots straight down the runway, which is next to the launching ramp. There is also a narrow and very long channel from the boat ramp to the bay proper, which being parallel to the runway was directly into the wind. We decided it all looked a bit dicey, and moved to the ramp at the head of Kogarah Bay, which we hoped would be more sheltered.

This ramp had a strong onshore breeze and no beach (just rocks) at high tide, but the tide was falling and by the time our boats were set up it had fallen enough to expose a small (1 boat) beach, so we were able to get both boats clear of the shore with some juggling of positions.

I rowed out and tried to do my clever Ness Boat trick of centring the mizzen and rudder while I got the main sail up, but the wind was so strong that while I did this the boat was reversing neatly downwind at a rate of knots.

Once the sail was up there was some spirited tacking to windward. This is the first time in years that I’ve sailed without any ballast. I’ve had up to 100kg of lead ingots under the floorboards, although for the last few years it’s been 50kg. The lack of that 50kg certainly makes a difference in the feel of the boat – more dinghy like and quite quick to get the rail down to the water. Although it’s quick to heel it seems to firm up as it approaches the point of swamping. I really had to hike, which I haven’t had to do in a long time. Around this time Peter was nearby and observed that my boat was “more gentlemanly”, which was far from what I was thinking, but at least I must have looked more in control than I felt.

I discovered with the increased activity that the new(ish) rowlock blocks protrude into my back at exactly the point where I need to sit, and the little motorbike seat replacing the thwart was getting in the way of my moving around (mysterious source of near permanent marks on front of shins discovered). I was going to re-do the rowlock blocks anyway after Kevin’s remarks a few weeks back about how quickly they’d break in a proper RAID rowing situation, so I have another reason to change them.

After one or two moments where I was nearly overpowered moving up the bay, I decided to go to my first reef. In retrospect I should have gone for another reef – I remember that in the early days of the boat pre-ballast I often sailed with several of them in. As the bay curved south east the wind seemed to get even stronger.

As I got towards the point at the south end of Todd Park I went to tack, and found that I couldn’t get around fast enough onto the other tack, even with the mizzen slacked right off. The third time I tried it (with an audience of amused power-boat types watching from a nearby and rapidly approaching jetty) I tried my other trick of using the mizzen like an airplane rudder, forcefully wrestling it downwind to try and force the prow around onto the other tack. As I did this the boat started to blow backwards very quickly, and the rudder was forced over 90º bulldozing water out of its path, yanking the tiller and tiller extension outboard.

I’m sure my enthralled audience were expecting an imminent impact with the sea wall next to their jetty. To thwart them and save the boat I lurched leeward to grab the tiller out of the water, coming very close to putting the lee gunwale under the water — in which case we would have taken on water instantly as the prow had come around sort-of onto the new tack in the course of all of this and the boat was moving sideways through the water.

Retrieving the tiller, I was able to finally get the boat moving on the new tack. I said something like “fun and games!” to the people on the jetty, who I’m sure could hear a damn thing I was saying with all the wind.

I caught up with Peter on the east side of the bay near the marina, and agreed via slightly frantic hand signals that we had been intrepid enough and we should head back to the ramp.

Not wanting to risk a gybe while heading downwind, I applied another Ness Boat trick which I will call the “coward run”. I centrered the mizzen and rudder, bolted forward and lowered the main. Returning to the tiller I eased the mizzen and let the boat fall away downwind, where it ran in proper gentlemanly fashion almost as fast as I’d been sailing upwind, but on mizzen alone. I found that by easing the snotter (my mizzen has a sprit boom, the snotter relaxes tension in the boom allowing the sail to fill more) it got faster — I noted I was overtaking small waves. Here was a Ness Boat trick that worked.

Peter was back at the now larger beach before me. As I approached the beach I got the centreboard and rudder up, got the oars ready, folded up the mizzen (I can’t explain how that works, you need to see it – t was an accidental discovery when I was re-rigging it once, and it’s sort of cool). I came in to the beach gently with an oar out on one side to assist. It was near low tide and the beach looked clear, but just a few metres off the beach the skeg struck a submerged rock, which got through the paint to the wood but otherwise did no damage.

Peter had his own conundrums coming back. Without a mizzen or deeper reefs he didn’t have a way to depower his boat. In the end he let his sail partly down and let the boom out, which seemed to work but I’ll let Peter describe it more if he wants to. In the wind I think both boats would have had steerage way under bare poles.

Fun and Games!