[quote=toddster]What are these "beaches" that you speak of? We have water or rock and nothing in between. The nearest access is a boat ramp in a state park, at the end of a long narrow L-shaped channel. 90% of the time wind blows straight up the channel, so either going in or out, you're screwed. To make matters more fun, the lagoon is sheltered from the prevailing wind by a tall cliff about a mile away... eddies form around the cliff so gusts come from random directions out of relatively calm air.
I've been rigging everything on the trailer and hanking the sails on but not raising them before backing to the ramp. Sometimes I raise the jib in light air, or bungee-reef it if I'm too scared. Gotta raise the sails at the dock because the wind would blow me into the rocks on the other side of the channel before I could gain control, otherwise.
On rare occasions, the wind blows perpendicular to the dock. This is great overall, because it lets you reach up and down the river the long way, but I haven't found a graceful way of rigging in those conditions. Flying a hull at the dock is not too cool. Last time I tried it, I got the sails up, but as soon as I pushed clear of the dock, a gust came along and flew the boat entirely out of the water, onto the rocks. I actually ended up resting on the bows and the rudder tips, right next to my truck. (Gee, maybe if I act nonchalant, they'll think I did this on purpose...)
Another rule of docks is that nobody is around to see a perfectly executed docking maneuver, but a really bad one always has an appreciative audience. A couple of weeks ago, I made a perfect, first-try approach to the dock. I was gliding in perfectly, so released the sheets and scooted over to the dock side. I was actually reaching out to hand my painter to a friend on the dock... just as the guy in front of me gunned his zillion-horsepower motor to run up on his trailer. My H16 shot backwards out of the dock and clear across the lagoon, into the rocks on the far side. :-x [/quote]
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