Tender Adventures of the Gallery Duck

Speaking of going overboard

Article by Greg Willihnganz

I’ve never experienced a man overboard. However, I did have a woman go overboard. It was not life threatening, but wife threatening—and believe me, threats were made after I dumped her off the bow into four feet of cold water coming into the dock. But it was not my fault. Not one bit of it.

Early in our relationship, I took my soon-to-be wife with me to a boat show in Detroit where I fell in love; not with Shirley, I was already in love with her. No, I fell in love with a gleaming 16’ fiberglass sailboat which shall remain nameless. What a beauty! And how clever the design. There was a giant V-berth for two beneath an open mini-cabin and it was big enough for even my 6’1” frame to horizontally fit in nicely.

Best of all: there was no compression post dividing the two berths. You could roll from side to side, port to starboard, like a sausage in a frying pan. The builder achieved this by reinforcing the cabin top with enough fiberglass to hold up the tall mast, despite downward pressure from the stays. I could stand on that cabin top with no oil canning. It spanned over those two berths with the strength of the London Bridge.

Such reinforcement requires a lot of fiberglass and the center of gravity lifted off the deck precipitously. Adding to the imbalance of the design, the sail was good sized, but the centerboard was undersized and with no ballast other than my considerable derriere, this was a very tender boat. With any respectable gust of wind, the boat went over like a duck at a shooting gallery.

None of this, if known to the salesperson, was shared with me. My attention was directed to the flawless gelcoat, the lovely handrails, the sweep of the boat’s clean lines, the durability of the strong, new trailer. To be fair, at my tender age, 31, I was a bit naive about such things. If it was being sold at a reputable boat show, it had to be a good sailboat, right? And with a prayer and a checkbook, I went down like one of those ducks at the gallery.

What I learned to my dismay was that the boat sailed best in three knots of wind. Ghosting along, it looked good and held a steady course. But as soon as the wind picked up, the boat developed a sudden weather helm and turned sharply into the wind—where it died. In gusty conditions, this happened over and over, like a skipping record.

As captain of my ship, I took responsibility. What was I doing wrong? Was the weight distributed poorly? Were the sails set wrong? Was the centerboard not down? Were my reactions too slow? Or was I just the victim of pernicious winds that were trying to test my virility?

It was only after weeks of weekend sailing that I realized my boat’s conspicuous lemon yellow hull was trying to tell me something. But that day came long after the day alluded to in the first paragraph of this article. On that outing, my now wife and I set out on Stony Creek Lake, thirty miles north of Detroit. This idyllic lake is perfect for small boats and just long enough for the wind to build and blow steadily—except when it doesn’t.

We were coming up to the dock majestically and I could feel the gaze of the loiterers on the shore, captivated by my shiny new boat. I asked my wife to go forward to catch hold of the dock and she disappeared behind the unfurled jib at the bow. When we were fifty feet from the dock, a sudden gust pushed the boat up on her beam ends and I frantically pulled the tiller to get control. We rocketed toward the dock.

“Shirley! Catch the dock,” I cried out. “Fend us off, Shirl.” Alas, she had left the vessel. The ensuing crash with the dock was a slow-motion collision that did no real harm to boat or dock. But my wife coming ashore, like King Neptune rising from the sea, threatened real harm. In vain, I tried to make amends, but her soaking clothes made a far stronger argument. While this colorful incident has since made many a family discussion livelier, it has done nothing for my reputation as a competent sailor. •SCA•