I built an OK Dinghy while I was in college and took it to California where I worked for Baxter and Cicero Sailmakers. If you’re not familiar with the OK Dinghy, it is a one man 13.5 ft boat with a 21 foot free standing mast located very near the bow. The boom sweeps the deck and the cockpit is tiny. The result is some challenging boat handling. To tack or gybe you have to roll up in a ball to get it the cockpit and not be hit by the boom. Gybes are particularly exciting as the combination of short water line and big sail mean the boat wants to broach if not perfectly balanced. In anything over 15 knots of wind, if you didn’t steer a perfect course through the gybe, it was not uncommon to literally be thrown out of the boat as it snapped rolled into a capsize.
One summer when I was in California, they had the North American championships in San Francisco Bay, so of course I had to go. I’d always heard about the summer sea breeze in SF Bay, and was looking forward to seeing it up close. To get ready, I bought a shorty wet suit to retain body heat which turned out to be an excellent idea. At the time there were no limits on clothing, so I built a jacket made of 5 sweat shirts to soak up water. The sleeves were cut off and sewn on the back and the front was split so you put it on like a vest with two clips to hold it together. The idea was to store it in a plastic bag until the wind came up. Then you could dip it in the water and put it on. If required, it was easy to get off.
When I drove into the Saint Francis Yacht Club, what impressed me most was the totally destroyed look of many of the boats in the dinghy park. I’d never seen so many patches where hardware had been torn off decks and reattached. This was reinforced during our tune up day as one of the locals capsized and had one of his air tanks fill with water. The Coast Guard offered to tow him back to the club. They hooked onto his bow cleat and proceeded to pull the deck off the boat. That was the first boat to drop out of the regatta.
The first race went off relatively early considering we had several miles to sail from the club down to the Berkeley Circle. The conditions were not that far from what I was used to sailing in. We had maybe 8 to 10 knots of wind with reasonable waves. The current was starting to ebb, and I’m not used to the lake moving, but all-in-all, I was feeling pretty good. After the race we sailed by a committee boat, and they threw us sack lunches. The trick to eating on the water was to put the boat beam to the wind with the sail all the way out and the tiller to leeward. The boat would just park. The wind pushed the bow down until it would move forward slightly. The forward movement would turn it back into the wind. Then you sat in the bottom with your feet over the leeward rail and your back to the wind. As I ate, I was aware of the wind building. By the time I was finished my feet were alternating between being in the water and pointing at the sky. When I cleaned up and looked around I was truly impressed. The sea breeze had come in and the tide was at full ebb. I had never seen waves that steep and close together. We were definitely not in Texas any more.
I pulled out the weight jacket and got ready for battle. As we approached the line it was clear this was going to be a war. We were all battling for a spot while trying to keep from being swept over the line. You were trying to watch the time, other boats, waves, and the starting line, something had to give. I gave up on the time and just stuck it in the middle of a pack.
One boat decided he was early and tried to duck behind the boat below him. A slight misjudgment and the leeward boat lost its rudder. One boat down. The next loss was at the gun. One boat trimmed in too fast and capsized. The wave was so steep it caught him off guard and he fell to leeward breaking his boom. Two boats down.
The windward leg was really tough. The waves looked to be 4 feet square. They were so close together that we were crashing to windward. More than once I miss steered a wave and went almost airborne over the top with a resounding crash at the bottom. One of the fiberglass boats hit so hard, he had the side deck break under him. Three boats down.
The main damage from the pounding showed up at the windward mark. The mast is free standing with maybe 18 inches between the mast step and the partners in the deck. More than one boat managed to crush its mast step from the pounding. They didn’t see the failure going to windward because the boom was stopped by the aft deck. However, when they turned downwind, the mast just continued forward tearing the partners out of the deck. Boats four and five down.
The other thing I noticed going to windward was that the waves were not aligned with the wind. Port tack was almost straight into the waves and starboard was a lot easier. This became an even bigger deal at the windward mark. We had a triangle course set with the first reach right at 45 degrees from a dead run. This put us close to going straight down the waves. I eased off on the reach, caught the first wave, and took it to periscope depth. I had my traveler mounted on the deck, so the water came across the deck, hit the traveler and went over my head. For maybe a second or so I was completely covered. The boat immediately behind me saw me disappear and mistook my screams of terror for screams of joy. He then reasoned that if I was having fun, he was out of his element. He immediately turned to sail back to the club. Boat six out of the race.
If the race hadn’t been exciting enough already, we then found ourselves at the gybe mark. The OK Dinghy is a challenge to gybe anytime, but in these conditions it was almost impossible. The first two boats were about one boat length apart. The leader caught the perfect wave at the mark and was able to make a successful gybe. The second place boat was on the back side of the wave with no hope of matching the leader. He went for the next best thing which was to shove the tiller over, let the boom cross, and let the boat capsize on the new gybe. It would take less time to right the boat than do a 270 turn. The third boat was the guy we called the crazy Canadian.
The problem with gybing the OK was that the mast was so far forward, it would drive the bow down when the sailed filled. This reduced the effectiveness of the rudder. If there was any heel in either direction, the bow would steer the boat much better than the rudder would, and the boat would just snap roll. The crazy Canadian had determined that the solution to this problem was to counteract the bow getting pushed down. As he approached the mark, he would stand up and look around. Then at the last minute, he would ease off the vang and steer to leeward. Then with perfect timing he would leap in the air landing flat on his back on the aft deck just as the boom cleared his nose by an inch or two. This resulted in the bow being out of the water. All he had to do was sit up, counter steer a little, pull the vang back on, and head off down the next reach. The spectacle was such a site that the next three boats capsized while watching him. Then the next boat tried to tack around, turned too fast, and capsized.
I now came to the mark with four boats capsized. I managed to make a wide rounding and successfully tacked to be the fourth boat around. The first reach was down the waves, now this reach was almost lined up with the waves. You could steer down the wave to gain speed and then back up the face like a surfboard to really take a ride. I had never gone anywhere near this fast in the OK and was starting to enjoy sailing in SF Bay. I should have been paying more attention.
As I built up speed the apparent wind shifted forward. As the wind shifted, I trimmed in the sail and went even faster. The combination of wind and wave had the boat going faster than I thought possible. At that speed the boat was absolutely solid and I could go up and down the waves as I wished. I finally did notice that I had the boom almost all the way in to the corner of the transom. I had shifted the wind almost 90 degrees. I’m guessing I was going close to 20 knots in a 13.5 foot boat. It never occurred to me to slow down. The next thing I saw was that I was on the biggest wave of the day. I turned down and accelerated even more. Always before when I got near the bottom of the wave, I could turn back across the face. This time all I could see was down. There was literally a hole in front of me. That which goes down must come up. The wave then formed what looked like a ski jump, and the next thing I knew I was going up. When I say up, I mean up. The bow cleared the water, then the entire hull became airborne. As the centerboard came clear the boat rolled to windward. The mast was the first thing to hit the water.
On the windward leg I had been feeling sorry for myself about my home made mast that weighed twice as much as the hollow Bruder masts. Now I felt much better. The Bruder masts were known to break when capsized to windward, let alone when you were doing anywhere near this speed. My tree trunk didn’t break. It didn’t take long to get things sorted and get back in the race. I think I was fifth or sixth by now with almost no one behind me. I was thankful to see the shorten course signal was well as the signal to return to the club.
Later at the club we learned that the worst damage of the day occurred at the gybe mark. A guy from Florida had chartered a beautifully varnished wooden boat for the regatta. When he capsized he discovered that the air tank hatches weren’t well secured and they came off. With the air tanks full of water, he had no luck in sailing the boat and began drifting down wind. The crash boat was busy, and didn’t get to him before he drifted up on a rock break water. The sailor was not hurt, but the boat was killed. There were holes in the bottom of the boat you could stick your head through.
I sure remember that time on San Francisco Bay.