IS THIS SAFE?
by Tm Mann – 10/16/2017

Here’s a mini sea story I don’t think you’ve heard before:

I’m taking Al Baroni, the prospective buyer for Spice, my SeaRunner 37, on a sailing trip across the Alenuihaha Channel to Maui; he’s going to check out the boat, make a decision, and fly back to California from there. He’s a sailing guy who’s delivered boats before and knows how to sail and navigate, and he just wants to get a feel for the boat in real ocean conditions before committing.

Me? Sell the boat or not, the Channel is no big deal; I’ve crossed it in 35-45 knots reefed down in the 37 before, and although it was wet, and stuff was flying around inside the boat, it was still a relative picnic. I figured I might meet a cute girl on Maui, or just get to go sailing one more time before selling Spice and moving on, so I knew if would be a fun trip for me too.

So we’re about 5 miles out in the Channel and headed for La Perouse Bay on the southeastern corner of Maui, doing 15 knots on a beam reach under full main, staysail, and yankee, with the windvane steering us in about 20 knots of apparent wind/12 knots true wind, and the manual steering system totally disconnected. We were doing at least 15, because my Sumlog only goes to 15 and it’s pegged most of the time.

One of the trolling lines jerks its bungee cord out to full length and rings the bell, and I pull in the attached 24-pound mahimahi that made a poor life choice. But there’s nothing as tasty as mahimahi that’s less than an hour old; so I fillet off a big chunk and head down the hatch to the galley to whip us up a bit of heaven.

And as I’m about to disappear down the hatch, Al asks: “Is this safe?”.

And I honestly don’t have a clue what he means. First I think he’s asking if me cooking while being underway is safe, but on second thought that seems silly. Next, it occurs to me that being on the self-steering while “the Captain” goes below and cooks might be worrying him, so I tell him: “Of course!”, just keep an eye out and give me a yell if you see another boat, or one of the Young Brothers tugs and barges. He still looks confused, so I say: “really, Al, the self-steering’s safe: I did 3,000 miles under self-steering from the Marquesas to Hawaii and didn’t touch the wheel once” (that’s true, but that was because the manual steering system disintegrated 4 hours after leaving the Marquesas. But that’s another story!).

He still looks perplexed, so I ask him why he’s concerned. He says: “I’ve never sailed faster than 7 knots in my life. IS THIS SAFE?” while pointing to the Sumlog, which has been pegged at 15 knots the whole time we’ve been talking.

And I crack up! I never sailed on anything that slow in my life, so his concern was invisible to me. So I sit back down and explain to Al that I’ve had the boat up to 25 knots while surfing before, and with this light a wind, the moderate seas we’re in, and good visibility for 20 miles in all directions, this was as safe as houses. I tell him that the wind and seas would have to almost double before we would have anything to worry about, and that would take 4 to 8 hours. And Al relaxed.

I came up with steaming plates of mahimahi, brown rice, and broccoli with butter about 20 minutes later, and we watched the sun sink into the ocean over the Channel; no islands in the way to block the view. Al took a long nap after dinner, I pulled Spice into a nameless bay off the Wailea coast and set the hook for the night, and we had a fun couple of days sailing around Maui. Al bought the boat, and I sailed back to the Big Island a couple of days later to start a new life and a new boat.

With Warm Aloha, Tim………