Catamaran Chaos?
This post comes from holiday on Hamilton Island, in the heart of Australia’s Whitsundays—a chain of tropical islands adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef. Catseye Beach on the north of the island is home to a fleet of Hobie catamarans, and felt like the a great place to try sailing something new.
“Are you sure you can sail one of these?” asked the Small Boat Works crew…“don’t we need a lesson?”.
In truth it was my first time sailing a dinghy-sized catamaran, but with its beautifully simple rig (a mainsail with no boom) I was quietly confident that we’d have no problems sailing around the bay.
We launched in the shallow surf and quickly caught the onshore breeze. Close-hauled we shot away from the beach, powering through the swell in force 5 gusts with the warm water splashing up through the mesh deck.
All was well until we reached the outer buoy—“ready about” I called and my two crew obediently lay down (the Hobie has deck space that can only be described as “palatial”). I eased the main a little, timing the tack with the swell, and pushed the tiller away. To my horror—and, I admit, morbid fascination—the windward hull’s bow nosedived as if auditioning for a role in a submarine fleet. I immediately eased off the helm to prevent capsize and we stopped dead, bobbing in the swell. We were in no immediate danger—the sun was shining—the water was warm. My fatal error was to try and reassure my crew by using this as a “teaching moment” (what was I thinking?!)…resulting in a mutinous outburst.
We spent the rest of our time gybing up and down the bay, blasting upwind on a close reach we made 7.5 knots which everyone agreed was tremendous fun. Back on shore I mentioned our tacking troubles to the staff. “Oh yeah, don’t do that”, they laughed, “we teach everyone to gybe in the first lesson!”