My firsts experience with sailing in winds above 15 knots was in Shreveport, Louisiana. I had only been sailing about 3 months, and all the Windmills in the state were going to Shreveport for a fall regatta, so our whole family loaded up and headed out. Saturday morning it was blowing. To my young mind it was a hurricane (likely 20 to 25 knots). I had no idea what I was in for. As we approached the Shreveport Yacht Club, I saw the first sign that things would be different. There on the side of the road was a sign stating “Do not molest the Alligators.”
The course for our fleet was 2 miles downwind from the club. This was to be my baptism in fire. The Windmill is a narrow boat with a very shallow vee hull and hard chines. As a result, it planes easily. The problem is that if you let one of the chines dig in, the boat will trip and capsize. You then have a problem, since the boat is completely open it takes practice to right it without it being full of water. This was a skill I did not have yet. The wind gods decided to remind me of this lack in my skill set on the way to the course. No, I did not capsize. I sailed past the then current State champion as he was standing in a completely swamped boat trying to bail it out. My confidence was not good.
My dad and I made the start, then we discovered a unique characteristic of Cross Lake. It has the smallest diameter puffs I have ever seen. They can better be described as micro bursts. The puff will be maybe 50 to 100 feet in diameter and at least 10 knots stronger than the surrounding wind. My mother later reported that one of these “puffs” hit the club with enough force to blow silverware off the tables and proceed to capsize every boat on the course directly in front of the club. With the small size and the wind spreading out, whether you saw a lift or header would depend on which side you were on. Two boats three boat lengths apart could get widely different winds in the puffs, and there were a lot of puffs. To make this a real challenge, you need to understand that my dad was not real athletic. When we got a lift, he would lean back and hike which was good. When we got a header and the boat stated healing to windward, he would let go of the jib sheet and grab for something to pull himself into the boat. This was not good. Just as I was frantically trying to get the boat to turn away from the wind, the jib would release. I tried yelling and pleading to no avail. How we avoided capsizing to windward I do not know.
We made it around the windward mark and set off on the fastest reach I had ever done to that date. This was refreshing since the speed added stability to the boat. We were still upright and ahead of the boats that had capsized, so we weren’t last. The thrill didn’t last long before I saw the gybe mark approaching. Successfully rounding the gybe mark was going to take skills I simply did not possess. There is a real problem in gybing the Windmill. The boat has a dagger board. If you raise the dagger board, it catches the boom vang and the boat capsizes. If you lower the dagger board, the boat turns too fast and you capsize. As luck would have it, I had just read Paul Elvstrom’s book and remembered the chapter about gybing in heavy wind. He said to raise the centerboard slightly from the reaching position to allow the boat to slip sideways a bit to avoid tripping. With time running out before we got to the gybe mark, I deduced that completely removing the dagger board was the closest we could get to Paul’s advice without the vang catching on the board. Now the fun began.
With no dagger board in the well, we had a geyser shooting up out of the open well. I wasn’t worried about the water filling the boat, since I no longer had any real control with the rudder, so we were clearly going to capsize at any second. Somehow we made it to the mark, and I found just enough rudder control to start the turn. The main flew across and the boat continued to turn. We were now planing nearly sideways and heeled to windward. My dad managed to get the board back in the well, and we survived.
At this point I have to admit to being a slow learner. I think we sailed two or three races that day with two gybe marks per race, and I took the board out every time. I still have vivid mental pictures of us wildly oscillating probably 45 degrees each side of vertical while maintaining a plane. There were several crash boats on our course to assist capsized boats, and they were constantly busy. However, I did begin to notice a trend. Every time we approached the gybe mark, at least one or often two would head our way at full speed. I honestly think word had spread and they just wanted a front row seat to the craziest sailing they had ever seen. I’m really not sure how we kept from capsizing that day, but I’m pretty sure knowing there were alligators in the lake helped.
Once back on shore, I got a lesson in how to do the S-turn required to gybe a Windmill, and I vowed to practice until I could do it.