At the moment, we have three healthy arms between our crew. As I happen to be in possession of two of those arms, the duties requiring brute force naturally fall on me. So I do all the sail handling, going on deck, jumping onto the dock. Unfortunately, I missed out big time when qualities like coordination, agility and sophistication were being dealt. I fumble through these duties as well as I can, painfully aware that I’m not the smooth, well balanced, cat-like creature I’d like to be.

When I started sailing I was often part of a bigger crew. It’s easier to disguise your shortcomings when there are several people onboard to share the tasks. And mostly I did pretty well, even as a bowman in charge of changing the headsails (despite hoisting my boot up the mast once, along with the spinnaker). So when we were buying our present boat, I didn’t think twice about the selection of hank-on headsails that came with it. Surely we could manage with those, just like I had done before.

I found out quite soon that we weren’t really managing. Arranging the foresail on deck ready to be hoisted is easy enough, while the boat is still nicely anchored or tied to its slip. We have the halyards lead to the cockpit so hoisting the sail while underway is still a relatively easy task. But when the wind pipes up and you have to change the sail into something smaller, I found it terrifying to make my way to the bow while it’s being tossed up and down in big waves. And even in lighter winds the large genoa can be a handful to keep from falling overboard and swallowing a ton of seawater. 

Mostly it was a struggle to get the sail down, and I was reluctant to change it into anything at all in less than perfect conditions, so we would often end up sailing with just the mainsail or even motoring the rest of the way. After three weeks of sailing in the mostly open waters of Estonia I was absolutely ready for a roller furling genoa. I am aware that when reefed, it will not point as high as a similar sized hank on sail – but if the alternative is motoring, it will point just fine.

Another problem was not having a topping lift to hold the mainsail boom up. This meant that whenever I lowered the mainsail the boom would come crashing down on the cabin top – unless stopped by the third healthy arm. But the third arm was often occupied elsewhere such as steering the boat into the wind, cranking the engine, reeling in the fishing lines that we had forgotten about and other things like that – a very busy arm you could say! The hanging boom would then jam the sliders in their track, which meant that I had to crawl to the mast and pull the sail down with my hands, holding a bunch of sail ties between my teeth while trying to grab the angry masses of canvas flying here and there.

So the sail manouvres on our boat were always a bit of a spectacle. But next summer they won’t be! Just think how easy it will be to casually roll in the genoa, then briefly point the bow into the wind while the mainsail drops down and neatly folds itself into its cradle… And all the while I can stay safely in the cockpit. No more crawling on all fours!

While these great improvements are being sewn at the sail loft, we are planning for more wonderful things to make life onboard easier. Here’s one upgrade we already made last summer, to keep our precious third crew member from falling overboard. See the miserable guardrails before…

…and after. They look great, don’t they – and our sails manager can lounge quite relaxed on the deck now!

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