Troy, Hank’s best man, flew in at 9, and ubered straight to the boat. Weather predictions were a steady 12 kts from the SSW, and although anything above 10 knots leaves us with some rough water, we figured a downwind sail would be smooth, and comfortable couple hours to Seattle and the Elliott Bay Marina. We did safety briefings underway, and bobbed our way up to the city. It was a little rougher than we hoped but I (hank) was having a blast cause we had never gotten the boat to go this fast. 11 knots on the nav system. We were FLYING!
About a half mile out from our home for the night, we turn the motor on, turn the boat into the wind and get the sails slack in order to bring them down. Only problem is we kept turning. Our first thought was our motor wasn’t strong enough to overpower the wind and waves. The wind would hit the port side of the sails, and lean us over hard, we’d spin, have a second or two of slack, then the wind would hit the starboard side, flipping the lean. This made it very dangerous for Tay to bring down the sail, let alone stay standing on the deck. I was at the helm, furiously turning back and forth trying to get some control of Scooter, as we bobbed and spun. Taylor finally found a stragegy. One arm around the mast, one arm on the sail, pulling down hard to fight the on-and-off wind. Unfortunately, with only one hand available, the wind would pull the sail back up as she went for each higher handful of sail. So, for 10 minutes of hard work, 3 feet at a time, she pulled down the sail, grabbed the sail with her teeth, and steadied herself against the thrashing waves and spinning wind.
Meanwhile, I realized something was wrong. Scooter refused to respond to the steering wheel I was furiously spinning back and forth, and I realized I hadn’t hit the stopper in either direction in a few minutes. I decided to test it, and spun the wheel as hard as I could to the left. It spun like a pinwheel in a gale. We had no steering.
“Taylor come back” I hollered above the wind and waves. “I’m almost done, let me tie off” she replied.
“THATS NOT OUR FIRST PRIORITY”
That got her attention. Fortunately we had cleaned our storage lockers a dozen times in the previous two months and there was always a short, rusty pipe we knew to be an emergency tiller buried somewhere. The next 5 minutes were wild. We poured the contents of our ‘garage’ into the cabin, found the rusty pipe, removed the rudder post cover, and fitted the pipe to the top of the rudder. All while listing back and forth, and spinning wildly. We had control, albeit limited.
We called the marina and asked for a tow in. “sorry, not a service they offer, call TowBoatsUS. TowBoatsUS was based out of Tacoma, and said they’d be happy to, they’d be there in 2 hours and it would run us $2-3,000. Crap.
We called back the marina and said send all your spare bodies out to the slip and help us dock our wounded vessel.
My heart was in my throat as we maneuvered into the marina past the breakwall, and slipped, swerving and scared, past hundred million dollar yachts, while the wind did its best to provide us with an insurance nightmare.
I’m not good at docking. I’ll be the first to admit. In hairy situations, I had usually given the reigns to Joe, and helped with the docklines. But Joe was a couple hundred miles away. I’m proud to say, that day, by the grace of God was the best I’ve ever done parking ole Scooter. The marina employees who had offered themselves up as bumpers were impressed and un-needed.
It took a few hours for my heart rate to come back to earth, and my hands to stop shaking.
When I went to pay our nightly dues, the Harbormaster had an anemometer behind his desk, with a max gust readout exceeding 45 knots. Our previous limit had been around 10.