What actually goes on in those beautiful, lazy sailboats that once again decorate the ocean views seen by vacationing landlubbers? It isn’t exactly what it seems.
A veteran Maine sailor once mulled over that question as he steered a Friendship sloop with its huge gaff-rigged mainsail in the waters off Mount Desert Island. It was one of those lovely summer days with a few soft clouds, a calm sea and a mild southwesterly breeze. Looking around at the blue and white seascape, he told his shipmates: “This is the way people onshore think sailing always is.”
And, of course, it isn’t. At other times, sailing along the Maine seacoast can be demanding, dangerous and sometimes even deadly.
Sails can provide a lovely, quiet and cheap means of locomotion. When wind and sea are at their best, sailing can be relaxing and fun. With life temporarily confined within the limits of the deck, cabin and cockpit, nothing else in the world seems to matter. But when wind and sea change, it can be time for quick thinking and quick action.
Storm clouds can suddenly darken the sky, often signaling a squall, something the sailors may not have considered when they set out for a day on the ocean. The wind picks up. Waves whip across the water, soon forming whitecaps.
All hands must turn to and shorten sail. That means lowering the big mainsail enough to permit furling its base along the boom and tying the roll in place with reef points, little ropes that have been hanging in a row along the sail. (More modern and expensive rigs permit either rolling the sail around the boom or rolling it inside the mast like a window shade.) If the wind is freshening, a second or even a third reef may be necessary. The jib or jibs also may need reefing or furling.
Shortening sail may be enough to enable a sloop to weather a storm. Ralph Stanley of Southwest Harbor, who has built many Friendships, has said that with the mast lying almost horizontal a sloop could right itself.
The Friendships, known from a distance by their squat, triangular look, rally every summer at Rockland for the annual Friendship regatta. One year, in a heavy blow when other boats heeled over with their lee rails well underwater, one of them sank. Loose water in its bilge kept the helmsman from holding the course. Ralph Stanley raced to the scene and saved all five people, hauling them aboard his powerboat.
Another Stanley-built Friendship, the 28-foot Freedom, has often sailed through the narrow gut between Great Cranberry and Little Cranberry islands, to the admiration and sometimes fright of unfamiliar passengers.
Watching sailboats from the shore is one thing. Sailing them is something else. The Chinese still may quote Chairman Mao Tse-tung as proclaiming, “Sailing the seas depends on the helmsman.”