23 years ago we were leaving Charleston heading North for our first off
shore sail. We left at night heading for Beaufort and ran into a storm.
After the storm we got caught in the surf around Myrtle Beach and nearly
ran aground. Then we got in another storm around Frying pan shoals, so by
the time we got to Beaufort we were really beat. And what was going to be
just 48 hours turned out to be 72 hours. But today we left at sunrise and
headed out with the tide.
Winds were 14g20 out of the SE so we were on a broad reach. Sam and I
decided to try the spinnaker pole to pole out the Genoa. We tried this on
the journey south but the lifting harness for the pole broke so we never got
it going. That was one of the things we fixed. So This was the best
opportunity to try it. So we put the wire halyard on the lifting harness
and the spare halyard on the jaw end. We lifted it up on the rocking deck
and got it on the Genoa much easier than we thought. It does want to swing
around however, and I'm sure it would have made a good video if there had
been a way to film our escapade. Every time the boat heels or rocks the
pole which is pretty heavy swings around and hits anything in it's path.
Once we got the jaws on the line (jaw down) we put other end in the cup and
we were off and running! Wing and wing poled out is amazing. We stayed on
this rig all the way to Cape Fear. One time during the night I needed to
jibe so I made sure that I put the wind off the port side instead of the
starboard and jibed the main but left the Genoa poled out to the starboard.
It worked fine. Then when I jibed back we were back on wing and wing again.
When we got to Cape fear in the morning the winds died and unable to keep
the sails filled in only 5 knots of wind we took everything down and
motored the last hour to the inlet.