gybe

Well, they still did, but at least I had finally figured out what gybing is (I really am going to have to make a glossary to explain some of these terms).

Imagine ripping down a half-mile line of swells, gybing on wave faces, leaping for air as high as the wind and your guts will let you.

Gybing - turning the stern of the boat through the wind -- with a spinnaker up is one of the most complicated manoeuvres we do with the Clippers; on the latest occasion, I volunteered to climb out to the end of the spinnaker pole to release some of the ropes.

I REALLY screwed up, I misread my notes and was waiting too long for the pressure to drop before gybing. Stupid fool - I cried myself to sleep in my bunk, for the first time.

* Demonstrate the following skills: sailing all points of sail, coming about, controlled gybing, coming into irons (stopping the craft), getting out of irons, and returning to shore or dock.

For gybing in strong winds, the low boom and sturdy alloy vang is welcome but our light-wind day couldn't test this.

"Heading now on an easterly course towards Marion and Prince Edward Island, but later tonight the wind will start to shift into the west and I will start to arc more south-east, before gybing tomorrow towards the Kerguelen Islands.

By the end of day two, he and a new friend called Jonathan were happy gybing and tacking in a nifty little dinghy called a Laser Pico, and made me envious with some pulsating, high-speed fly-pasts on a rib powerboat.