Seven Seconds

Seven seconds... That is all the time that elapsed between the first shot posted here which shows Adam a little bit bored and the second shot which shows Adam hiking over to keep the sailboat from capsizing... seven quick seconds. 

Things change quickly on the water but when you are sailing such a small, light and nimble boat such as the Minifish, these quick changes require fast thinking and quick action to avoid heeling over and ending up in the water.

We had a week of some pretty wild sailing conditions. The wind would be calm and then within seconds the wind would whip up suddenly creating white caps on the lake. The wind would gust to well over 30 knots from a sustained wind of only 12 knots... then the wind would instantly change direction by up to 90 degrees! Some of this quick thinking and fast action involved knowing how to duck in an instant as the wind suddenly gusted and changed direction, slamming the boom over to the other side of the boat, narrowly missing your head.

In those seven seconds depicted in these two photos, the boat not only heeled over requiring Adam to hook his foot under the hiking strap and lean back off the boat using his body as a counterweight but, if you look closely at the background, that little boat zipped across the lake far enough that the backgrounds do not look the same at all! 

Conditions like this make for a wild ride and these conditions definitely test both man and machine. Fortunately, Adam and I both managed to stay one step ahead of the wind and, perhaps more importantly, the boat held up well to all the insane forces these type of conditions inflict upon a small, lightweight sailboat and its rigging.

Just seven seconds...