Cat Sailing in the Aegean
As you know I am on a holiday in Greece. I had arranged with Thanasis, a mate of mine, to go sailing. Thanasis holds a Greek Sailing license. It’s for open sea, yacht sailing. He hasn’t sailed a dinghy before, but he likes the idea. He knows dinghies are more responsive to control changes than yachts and he wants to have a go. He bought a sailboard couple of years ago but he hadn’t had much time to “play” with it.
When I started (dinghy) sailing, Thanasis told me that he wanted me to show him a few things. We had arranged to meet, here in Greece for some dinghy sailing. Thanasis’ parents live a couple of hours away from where I stay during my holiday. Thanasis spends his weekends at his parents’ place and 15 km away is one of Neilson’s resorts. He enquired about renting a couple of Lasers for a day from them, but he was told that we would be better off renting them from a guy, Fred, who is based next to Neilson’s.
After we went to Thanasis’ place, we went for a coffee, had a chat to catch up, had a swim and then we went to Fred’s. Fred has a hut on the beach at Porto Heli right in front of AKS Hotel. He has a couple of Lasers, a Laser 16, a Laser Stratos and an assortment of Hobies, a couple of 16s, a couple of Twixxies and a few more. We wanted to take the two Lasers, but one of them had a broken top mast. Then I thought that we could take the Stratos, but Fred suggested we take a cat because it was too gusty.
We took a Hobie Twixxy which is made of polyethylene and small-ish. It doesn’t have dagger-boards, but a narrow long fin under each hull. It doesn’t have a proper boom, but a full-length batten at the foot of the sail. This means that there is no vang adjustment either. There is a very long traveler at the rear of the trampoline, but still it doesn’t give you enough control. It also had a small gib and no spinnaker or gennaker. It was my first time in a cat and tacking and gybing involves facing aft and passing the tiller extension behind the aft mainsheet. So I actually had to “hug” the mainsheet while changing tack on the trampoline.
We managed to get the Hobie to “buzz” on a few broad reaches. Our combined weight was over 200 kg, so we didn’t really have to hike. We saw a few of Neilson’s Lasers capsize, but we were lucky. The Hobies “sing” when you start flying because there is a bit of slack between the rudder-blades and the rudder-heads, so the former vibrate within the latter. We had a problem tacking. Most of our tacks were slowing down the boat a lot. I am sure there is some kind trick that prevents this from happening, but we didn’t manage to discover it within the two hours we had.
I agreed with Thanasis, that next Saturday we’ll go again and most probably we’ll take a Hobie 16. I have sent a text to Steve to give me some tips on tacking and gybing. Steve used to race them, so he knows the habits. First experience in a cat, in the Aegean Sea and it was really exciting! Thanasis admitted that it was his first time coming in under sail and he was quite stressed. He really enjoyed it, though, and he is looking forward to next Saturday. See you then.