Dragging bumpers...

To a sailor "dragging bumpers" probably describes heading off with the fenders still dragging through the water. (Little Nomad suffers this indignity once in a while, her deck monkey occasionally forgetting that chore.) But I am still more pilot than sailor, and "dragging bumpers" is pilot speak for drag racing a thunderstorm to an airport. When I do it in the airplane I have a huge speed advantage ranging anywhere from 60 to 340 nm/p/h. I have onboard weather radar. And I usually have continuous weather updates from approach control and the tower. Doing it in a sailboat is a little different story.

After two days of pretty tame sailing and the season's first raft up Deb and I awoke this morning to the weekend's best winds. Knowing we had to keep and eye to the weather as storms were forecast, we headed out enjoying a really fun sail on a nearly empty, and quiet, lake. (The power boaters were out in droves this holiday. For most of the weekend all we could hear was the roar of motors turning dinosaur juice into noise. If my bike made that much of a racket they would throw me in jail! Early this morning though, they were apparently still nursing hangovers and had not yet taken to the water.)

We were about 3 miles south of the marina and on the other side of the lake when we decided that the clouds were taking on the solid look of approaching weather. Mid-western T-boomers can flash to life in surprisingly few minutes. Time to turn for home.

At first it was a struggle. The growing storms seemed to be sucking all the energy out of the sky. Wing on wing for a bit put us on a bad heading. A deep reach just shy of a run had us pointing better, but the GPS still showed only 1.6 knots on the VMG. This put the slip nearly 2 hours away. I wasn't sure we had two hours, but hey, we are (or are trying to be) sailors. Do the best you can with what you have and hold the diesel for last resort kinds of things. But as we watched the sky darkened and the first outlines of a wall cloud started to take shape. The VMG was up to 2.2, but we really had to make a decision on the engine. Best motor speed is about 4 knots. If we could catch a bit of wind we would do much better on the sails; I decided to hold off just a little longer.

It was a textbook example of getting it perfect. The wind freshened, Nomad leaned against the traces and soon we were making 5.8 knots directly for the "No Wake" buoy. Lightning danced behind us, thunder rumbled in an almost continuous song, waves danced, and the rain started to fall. But we had done everything we could think to do should we get caught flat footed in a gust front. The boat was closed up tight, the Bimini was folded up and secured, the fenders were deployed, we even had a plan for spinning up into the gust and blowing the halyards. That proved unnecessary as our timing was spot on. The incoming weather was pushing a huge ridge of air in front of it, and we rode that ridge right to the harbor inlet.

As we closed in on the marina, (us and a slew of others running for cover) we turned just enough to blanket the jib and dropped it to the deck. Even with the jib gone Nomad was making nearly 6 knots flying dead down wind on the main. Near the point we tacked the boat into the wind, dropped the sail neatly onto the boom and swung the bow for home. Friends waited for the dock lines as we coasted into the pier and I didn't quite get the last of the teak covers on before the deluge arrived.

I know I am a deranged individual. But riding that wind, playing right on the edge of an ugly gybe to keep the main sail full of push, making plans to cover possible contingencies like a massive gust or the engine failing at a bad moment, and working with Deb to get the things done we needed to get done, was some of the best minutes of sailing we have had so far. I love sitting at a quite anchor, swinging gently in my hammock and sipping a sundowner. I love rafting up with friends and splashing around with the kids in the lake. I love those easy tacks where everything seems to be on rails and you look up from your book once in a while just to check on traffic. But I really love it when you look to the sky, your boat, the water; read the weather, make the plans, and do it right. There is a whole bunch of stupid in the world and I contribute my share. But not today.