Laule'a - bareboat charter

I knew that sailing a big catamaran like Laule'a (42' long Lagoon 420) would be a complicated affair.  In fact, that was a big part of the reason why we bareboat chartered her last Sunday.  I wanted to get some experience under my belt and start learning from mistakes.  You can only learn so much from reading books, after all.

We were 2 hours late getting off the dock, mainly due to a rip in the jib from the previous renters.  It changed our plans a bit, but our plans were flexible to begin with.  High tide was at 11 am.  As long as we could get under the gate and back before the tidal current picked up, there wouldn't be many worries about getting stuck right away.  We cast off just a bit after 11.

mistake #1: While leaving the marina, I saw a long line of kayakers crossing the channel.  I slowed down, but felt a little impatient to beat the tide, so I made a short beep on the air horn.  Blast is more like it.  The horn was a LOT louder than I expected, and it startled all the kayakers.  The line split to let us through, but not without a few glares.  As I waved and thanked them for letting us through, I realized that from their perspective, I just totally bullied my way through.

The current was just starting to swirl when we were under the bridge.  This wasn't a big deal (yet), since we moved down to a point where there was very little boat traffic around.  Dad suggested that we could raise the sails for our downwind leg.  I turned on the autopilot with the engines at idle-forward, thinking that would mean enough water over the rudders to keep the boat pointed into the wind, and Dad and I could figure out how to raise the sails with little mind to keeping the boat pointed in the right direction.

mistake #2:  I think a number of factors worked against this.  The Lagoon has rudders ahead of the drives, so there's no extra prop wash to help give the rudders bite.  The current was swirling, so the autopilot needed to fight the current in addition to the wind.  Once I noticed that the boat was drifting off-wind, I pulled on the rudder to turn back, but the wheel was pushing back pretty hard.  Was the swirling current pulling on the rudders that hard?  Was there something stuck on one rudder or the other?  It was a good minute before I checked the autopilot and saw that it was still engaged.

I turned it off, centered the rudder, and used the engines to keep the boat pointed while Dad got the sails up.  If we weren't pointed towards our limit (charter company doesn't want us leaving the bay), simply revving the engines up a bit might have been enough.

Our downwind leg along the San Francisco waterfront past Alcatraz was fairly uneventful.  We needed to jibe if we wanted to pass Alcatraz to port.  Dad suggested we make a 270-degree tack, instead.  I thought that, as long as the main sheet was pulled in, we should be fine to jibe.

mistake #3: Make sure that the traveler line clutches are locked before attempting a jibe.  In fact, it's probably a good idea to keep them locked at all times except for when you're actually adjusting the traveler.

As we cleared Alcatraz, we jibed again (much more controlled!), and started a port beam reach.  The winds were picking up to about 15 knots with gusts up to 20.  Dad and I talked a little about reefing, but decided that we'd be in the wind shadow of Alcatraz soon enough.

observation #1: The Lagoon 420 doesn't provide an easy way to tell the position of the traveler.  You can step from the helm out to the side deck and see the boom easily enough, and the main sheet gives you a general idea, but you don't really know where the traveler is without walking out in front of the salon.

I think it would be a fairly easy thing to add an indicator finger to the traveler car that reaches back under the lip of the bimini.  Laule'a has a satellite antenna mounted in the way, but in the general case, I think this could work well.

With Dad's sail trim, we reached 10 knots over ground (the water knot-meter read "0" the entire trip).  Not bad for a floating motorhome with dirty hulls and an inexperienced crew.  We drifted through Angel Island's wind shadow and peeked up into the northern bay behind Tiburon.  Then plan was to get to the anchorage in Paradise Cove for lunch.  We ended up there right smack halfway between lunch and dinner.

Rather then anchor early and just sit around for an hour, we turned around and headed up Raccoon Strait.  The tidal current was probably close to 3 knots, here, and the winds against were probably in the teens.  The wave conditions weren't bad, however.  We approached Angel Island close-hauled and prepared for our first real tack (the on near Paradise Cove was in such light winds, we decided it didn't count).

observation #2: For the first tack, I let the autopilot steer to have one less thing to worry about.  Unfortunately, we had something magnetic near the autopilot compass.  Without knowing where that compass was, I had no idea how to troubleshoot that.  The boat veered off from a close-hauled on a port tack to just past a beam reach.  The chart plotter map reading was almost 90-degrees off of what we could clearly see.  I turned the auto-pilot off and was weary of using it after that.

Our second tack was not far off the shore of Tiburon, and while the tack itself went relatively smoothly, the boat was only going 3 knots when the sails filled up again.  I think I wasn't gentle enough with the steering.  Whatever happened, we had a water speed of about "0", which meant the rudders were useless, and the boat turned back up into irons.  At that point, the jib was back-winded, which pushed the bow back towards Tiburon.  We didn't have as much sea room as we had before, which made me a little nervous, so I started the engines and used them to help point back to Angel Island.  Once the sails pulled us back under way enough for the rudders to work, I put the engines back in neutral.

After we beat our way almost to the end of Raccoon Strait, we realized it was starting to get close enough to time to think about dinner that we wanted to work our way back to Paradise Cove.  We stayed away from a nasty spot where the tide and the wind were stacking up into a frothy mess as we turned back downwind and motor sailed (almost 7 knots!) back to the anchorage.

We dropped the sails in the lee of Tiburon.  Dropping the anchor was uneventful.  I backed down to a little over half throttle to make sure the anchor was set and took occasional checks to make sure we weren't dragging.

mistake #4: If you're only hanging out on the hook for an hour or so for dinner, anchored in sticky clay, you probably don't need to back down very hard to set it well.  The windlass struggled a bit to pull the anchor free.

mistake #5: Once the windlass was struggling, I should have motioned for Dad to motor the boat forwards a bit to lift the anchor out, instead of loading up the windlass motor.  It pulled the anchor clear, anyway, but it probably caused needless wear-and-tear.

With the sails still down, I motored back up Raccoon Strait, directly upwind, to the marina.

observation #3: If you have a nice, large display, you should use local data for that chart plotter, and not for the tiny little autopilot display (The large display was a Raymarine unit, while the autopilot was a Garmin.  Why was that separate?)  The marina slip was marked on the large display, which didn't have accurate map information.  We had to wander around the mooring field a little before we could see where we were supposed to be.

Getting docked only took four or so tries (no bumps or bruises, though!).  I was trying to back in, but the wind was pushing us along the dock.  It would have been easier to pull forward into the spot, but there was a lot less room in front of us than behind us, so I got in some maneuvering practice before Dad could lasso the dock cleat.