“It looks like Bridal Veil Falls!”
“You’re rehired!”
A roller came along to lift Boy Toy, then shrug her off, as she fell into the trough behind, deep enough to lose the wind and appreciably slacken the sails.
“That might have been the biggest swell I’ve ever seen inside the Gate,” said Ron, as he corrected the helm. The darkness turned a shade darker. “Look to port.”
The lights on the Golden Gate Bridge were nowhere to be seen.
Regan realized that she was looking at a wall of water. “Yikes!”
“Just about perfect!” yelled Ron, correcting the helm as the next swell lifted the sails into the wind.
The mizzen cataract appeared to redouble its effort to fill the cockpit. Regan thrashed her boots in the rainwater as if she were on a stationary bicycle. “Perfect!”
When Boy Toy topped the next swell and Ron saw where they were: “Okay, boss, prepare to fall off under gale conditions.”
“Prepare to fall off under gale conditions. What’s that mean?”
“It’s time for you to take the helm.”
Regan looked at him.
“Come on,” Ron said. “Switch positions with me.”
He scooted forward on the port cushion and Regan jumped aft to take his place.
“We’re going to fall off the wind,” Ron shouted, “into a broad reach, maybe even a dead run! It’s not a jibe, nor do we want it to be, but it will feel like one. As we top the next roller, ease the helm over as we ease the sheets. Otherwise she’ll want to stay on her current point of sail. When were done we’ll still be on port, but with the breeze over the port quarter.” He slashed the edge of his hand at the new vector, to starboard. “In the course of this maneuver, not only will the skipper be steering, she will also be easing the mizzen.” Ron freed the mizzen sheet, led it under the away horn of its cleat, and handed Regan the standing part. “Try not to burn a stripe through the palm of your glove.”
A gust heeled the vessel. Regan held the helm. The starboard rail dipped under, but Boy Toy heeled no further.
Ron moved to the starboard side. “I’ll be slacking the jib.” He bounced his hand off the standing part of the working sheet, between the cleat and the winch, sufficiently taut that it might have passed for a stick of wood. “Keep your sail to leeward of a right angle to the wind, keep the bow to weather.” He unwrapped the working sheet until its standing part passed but once under the away horn of the cleat, as it passed from his gloved hand to the winch. “Ready?”
“Ready!”
As the next eastbound roller lifted the boat: “Fall off!”
Regan eased the helm to starboard as both of them eased sheets. The swell carried Boy Toy eastward as the bow fell away from the wind.
“Feel it?” yelled Ron.
“Yes!” she replied.
“Ease sheets. Ease the helm. Ease sheets. Center the helm. Ease, ease, steady as she goes...”
Now, wind over her port quarter, Boy Toy was seething straight for the half-mile gap between the Belvedere Peninsula and the western tip of Angel Island, the entrance to Raccoon Strait, surfing the swells as they passed under her, having smoothly affected a course change of some seventy-five degrees in thirty knots of wind.
“Steady as she goes, boss!” exclaimed Ron. “Make fast. Nice!”
“Likewise, I’m sure,” Regan said. “Skipper,” she added, and they high-fived a couple of sodden gloves beneath the mizzen boom.
Ron lifted his eyes for a thoughtful gaze at the main truck, rainwater running over his face. “We should do this more often!”
“Yes!” Regan shouted back.
A swell passed beneath the hull. Regan corrected to port. The jib slacked as Boy Toy settled into the trough. Regan corrected to starboard. Again, a following swell lifted Boy Toy into the wind. Regan corrected to port. Both sails filled with a crack, and the starboard sheet parted. The bow veered to port. Regan threw her weight onto the wheel. “I can’t hold her!” she yelled amid the racket of the flailing jib.
“Don’t try!” Ron seized the mizzen sheet. “Give her her head!”
Regan let the rim of the wheel spin. As the Boy Toy swung to port, broadside to gale and sea, Ron hardened the sheet so that the mizzen pushed the stern to leeward. The next swell turned Boy Toy broadside to the wind, and she might have broached. But Ron eased the mizzen as she rose so that, though yawing downwind and into the trough between swells, she had only her hull and but a little sail area to present to the wind as the next swell lifted her. She climbed the following swell and, on top, more or less righted, Ron hardened the sheet so that the mizzen carried Boy Toy’s stern into the lee.
Worked thus, two or three swells later, the vessel lay bow to windward, stern by the lee, both jib and mizzen flogging like guns firing at will, the entire operation slowly driven backward by wind and turning tide.
“Now what?” Except that she had to shout to be heard, Regan put the query in an entirely reasonable tone.
“I need to go forward and get that sail under control,” Ron shouted back, “before it destroys itself.”
Regan regarded the scene at the bow. In the streaming dark, it looked as if the shadows, lines, and shapes of the inanimate world had come alive to conduct a knockdown brawl, with appropriate sound effects, strafed by tracers of rain as the works flailed in and out of the red and green of the running lights. The flogging canvas, fore and aft, sounded like a regiment of enraged taiko drummers.
“Let’s start the engine!” Regan shouted.
“I thought you wanted to go sailing!” Ron shouted back.
Regan looked at him.
“Besides, that’s three grand worth of sail up there.” Before she could dismiss the financial angle, Ron said, “Let’s try something else first. If it doesn’t work, we’ll start the engine.”
Regan nodded. “At your orders, skipper.”
“We’re in irons. Understood?”
“Irons it is.”
“We want to bring the bow to port. Once she’s on a starboard tack, I’ll take a line forward, reave a new starboard sheet, and we’ll be good to go.”
“But how do we get out of irons without a foresail or the engine?”
Ron pointed. “We bowse the mizzen boom to port. The breeze will push the stern to starboard. As soon as the wind comes over the starboard side, we sheet both sails to port and Bob’s your salty uncle.”
“Heading right back where we came from,” Regan pointed out, casting an eye into the darkness.
It struck Ron that back where they’d come from was the last place Regan Ellis wanted to go. “We’ll make a U-turn soon enough!” Ron shouted above the din. “With this fresh breeze we have all the boat control in the world!”
When Regan smiled, raindrops pelted her teeth like bird shot. Fresh breeze indeed.
“Take three wraps on the port winch and get the slack out of the sheet.”
“Done...”
“Where’s the goddamn winch handle?” The winch handle wasn’t in its holster, low down on the forward side of the mizzen mast.
They felt around in a couple of inches of brine until Regan found it under a tangle of wet lines. Handing the crank to Ron, she belayed the tail of the port jib sheet around the away horn of a cockpit cleat, so as to pass the better part of the load to the boat’s superstructure rather than her own, to prevent the sail flogging the sheet forward.
Meanwhile, Ron retrieved a four-part bosun’s tackle from the rope locker. He clapped one block to a loop of line midway along the mizzen boom, the other to a dock-line cleat abaft the cabin, and led the purchase across the cockpit to starboard, took three wraps around the starboard winch, and inserted the sprocket of the winch handle. “Ready, boss?”