I certainly did not expect, when I gave my crew the helm and went down for a quick nap, that my Genoa halyard was about to apple core and that we were about to see winds up to 34kts. At that moment we were peacefully wing on wing without the pole with 6-8 knots behind us, just turning the corner of the St Mary’s River onto a heading that would bring us straight through Whitefish Bay and into Lake Superior. It was forecast to be the last of an unusual east wind. Before I could fall asleep I heard the quickening flow of water past the hull. I peeked my head up and advised Mark on using the wind vane function on the autopilot, rather than having it steer to a compass course, in order to prevent the Genoa from collapsing and filling again. Shortly thereafter he called down that he thought the Genoa was coming down. As I’m quickly getting my gear on, muttering about how Genoas do not usually just come down, he calls down again, more anxiety in his voice this time, saying the Genoa was tearing.
And of course it was 11pm with no moon.
Through the beam of a flashlight I could see an 8’ tear running vertically along the luff, just 3” aft of the bolt rope. My first reaction was to furl the sail. But that did not go right and a bunch of sail was loosely wrapped around the drum, something I attributed to the tear causing the furl to start unevenly. Temporarily things seemed in control until a big flap of the leech began to flog loudly. I spun the fuller a few more times which provided a few minutes relief, but again a flap opened up. I tried wrapping a sail tie around it, but the flap kept escaping. At one point I strapped myself to the furled sail, stood on the bow pulpit and tied a sail tie as high as I could get it.
Whatever we did, a flap persisted and flogged violently. I did not have a sense for what was going on. As much as I would try to tighten things up, they kept coming loose. My sail ties and Genoa sheets were falling and pretty soon there was a rat’s nest of Genoa sheets and sail ties at the base of the fuller, even under the drum.
The violent flogging of the sail led to violent shaking of the forestay against the toggle at the base. My strength was insignificant in comparison to the forces involved. I was concerned we could break something and the rig would topple.
To drop the sail we would need to unroll it, temporarily unleashing a lot more chaos, before it could be muscled to the deck. I considered a situation a couple years ago on the double handed return leg of the Bermuda 1-2 when one of the nearby competitors was hit in the eye with flogging ropes that had balled together. It really is all fun and games until someone loses an eye. I chose to take my chance of losing the rig over increasing the risk one of us could get hurt.
In the midst of this a “Laker,” one of the 750’ boats that transit the Great Lakes, was coming right at us and we asked him to divert so we could hold our course as “we’re having a bit of a shit show over here.” He consented but also asked what the hell we were doing out here. Pretty soon I was being hailed by the Coast Guard, asking if we needed assistance. I just said “Not right now. Thank you.”
We settled on trying to tuck behind Whitefish Point, in hopes the lee of the land would offer some protection from the East winds that were consistently 25-30kts. We did not have local knowledge about how close we could get to the shore but I had specifically been warned of huge underwater boulders on Lake Huron so we stayed in 40’. Our chart plotter was misbehaving and would not zoom in for details of the shallows. Whether our strategy paid off or if the wind just passed, eventually we began to see teens and when we saw 14 we decided to unroll and drop. That was when I first looked at the halyard.
The halyard exits the mast a little above eye level and then goes through a rope clutch. Just below the rope clutch the cover was all bunched up. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at until I noticed that above the clutch, on its way into the mast, the halyard was reduced to bright red Dyneema core. The clutch has apple-cored the halyard, completely severing the cover, and the core was working its way out. The core had virtually no tension on it. The sail was only staying up by virtue of it being furled and it was gradually telescoping back into itself, causing the free edge to be slack. The winds found the slack leech and it flogged
The halyard is 8mm covered Dyneema. These ropes have all their strength in the core, so the core was strong enough to hold it, but the core is slippery and requires the cover be cleated or tied. This halyard had been in use for 15,000 miles including two roundtrips to the Caribbean, three roundtrip Bermuda races and a year of living aboard. The clutch would have locked onto the same small section of cover hundreds of times. I had flipped the halyard because of chafe from the upper mast sheave and it had not started to chafe there again since I flipped it. Admittedly I had not inspected the section into which the clutch sunk its teeth.
In preparation to drop the sail we had to unwrap by hand many turns of the Genoa sheets. These seemed to have fallen down below the fuller drum. I had to cut one of the Genoa sheets because of a jam, but it turns out I only cut 5’ off the end. Several of the sail ties I had tried to tie around the forestay and contain the flogging also ended up down there, but they are hard to unknot and now I am short sail ties because I had to cut so many.
We had made the decision to drop once the wind hit 14 and it was down to 10 by the time we were actually ready. Once down we dragged it through the companionway and into the v-berth but, on the good side, it wasn’t drenched with salt water.
At first we were undecided what had failed first, the halyard or the sail. By the time I looked at the halyard we had been flogging for quite a while. Could the violent flogging have jerked on the halyard enough to tear the cover? Possibly, but there’s some evidence my crew member’s initial observation was correct and the halyard failed first. It would explain the bunch of fabric around the base of the fuller which I initially blamed on furling a torn sail. And it would explain the persistent unfurling. The leech spirals up the forestay like the stripes on a candy cane. If you were to compress that candy cane from the top, but the white stripe stayed the same length, the stripe would bulge out. As the sail drops, the head to foot distance is compressed but the leech, analogous to the stripe of the candy cane remains the same length. That explains why it kept coming unwrapped beyond my reach and why putting more turns on the fuller temporarily solved it.
I totally missed it that the halyard was failing. In my haste to save the sail by quickly furling it, I did not fully assess the situation and did not take in all the information given to me.
At some point here the boat had become more of a survival platform than a pleasure craft. The action of clipping heightens the senses. You only have one hand to work with because the other one is holding on. Motions are deliberate and thought out. Comfort is still important, but now amounts to maintaining a comfortable motion of the boat and staying warm.
There are two levels of intelligence here. The first could be thought of as more cognitive. How do we solve the problem. There are always multiple cognitive challenges going on at once on a boat. You are not going to get all of them right.
But once you get yourself into a situation like this planning can be more important than doing and that brings us to a more emotional level of thinking. It involves judgement and seeing the big picture. Five miles into Lake Superior at night is the wilderness and you do not want to
make things worse. Sometimes decisions slow down. And there is no room for panic. I was very deliberate with my crew and simply told him “We are not going to panic.”
My Genoa was already fragile after 15,000 miles and living aboard for a year. It could not take forces out of line with how it was designed and would tear if I tried to sail with it roller furled. It was made of a material similar to Mylar, with a nylon taffeta, a very thin layer of regular sail material on either side to add durability. The high-tech fibers cannot withstand flogging and what we put it through basically destroyed it from the inside.
We sailed the rest of the way to Duluth with a Solent sail. Performance with that sail is disappointing below 20kts. We took the passage through the Keweenaw Peninsula and stopped at Houghton where we spread out the sail and paid our respects.
I came into Superior a bit humbled with my tail tucked between my legs. I had dubbed this trip Gryphon’s Grand Tour and had t-shirts made for others who came along. In five stages I had brought the boat from the Caribbean to Lake Superior on her own bottom. While the last leg initially felt like a train wreck, we got through it without injury. My crew and I assured each other that we are still friends. And besides, more people want to hear about the Erie Canal than about my slap-down by Lake Superior.
I have inspected the halyard since then. I do not see any obvious wear on either side of the fray. Both sides of the frayed cover look the same with an inch worth of loose threads all the way around. There is no damage to the core. There is no worn spot where the halyard went over the mast top sheave as there had been before I flipped it. I have yet to confirm that all my 18 clutches are Antal 10 series and not Antal 12 Series V-Grip Clutches.
Another wildcard in this situation is that my mast head sheave for the jib halyard has ovaled. There is a spot that catches on each revolution. I found this on routine inspection. It probably contributed to the chafe that forced me to flip the halyard. I reduced but did not eliminate the catching by going up the mast and spraying lubricant in there, but I was not able to get it replaced in the Caribbean while the mast was up. I am not sure if resistance at that point could have allowed the clutch to eat away more at the cover. Maybe it is not related.
There also may have been a component of sailing to a schedule here. We had taken a morning flight up to the boat, had completed our list of things, and I was eager to get off the dock and catch a rare east wind to get us west across Lake Superior before a little ball of fire on the forecast roared thru. But our groceries had not been delivered, we had to hoof it over a mile to the grocery store where we shopped with a dock cart, and I was exhausted. We left the dock at 7p, just as it was getting dark. We hit the lock without the boat hooks in hand and were a bit disorganized. When we got into open water and we set up wing on wing in light air I went to lay down. But then when I heard the water rushing past the hull I did not come up. I left a new crew member on deck who now feels responsible for what happened.
Several weeks later...
I have a new idea as to what happened. Perhaps I did not close the clutch completely when we raised the Genoa. In the marina the wind was on our stern so we hoisted the Genoa after leaving the dock. Within 4 hrs it had failed. It is a good rope and I rarely stored the Genoa on the fuller, so it was not exposed to weather during storage. And the clutches are all maintained well. If I had not closed the clutch completely that would explain the cover tearing and the sail dropping. I don't remember if it was partially opened when I finally discovered that it was the source of my problems. At that point I was beat and sleep deprived and may have missed a lot.
I do not think the problem was due to poor sailing by my crew. I am very sensitive to what the boat is doing from my bunk and and did not get the sense anything was wrong. I still do not think I should have left him on deck when I could hear water rushing past the hull, telling me conditions had changed.
[Joe Cooper at Quantum sails encourages those he works with to write up our failures, so this was written as an assignment]
