Of wind and dinghies

"Man overboard!" The 14-foot sailing dinghy veers sharply left, disheveling the water as it approaches its target: the man overboard. In a nearby rescue whaler, a man is shouting instructions, yet the pair of women seated in the cockpit of the yellow Laser II, labeled "UW4" on its sail, pass up the man overboard for a second time. With a slight shift of the rudder, the dinghy makes a wide turn and comes around a third time, glancing off the man overboard on the craft's starboard side. "You're dragging him!" shouts the man in the whaler.

UW4 has failed.

And so ends the final exercise of the afternoon -- a challenging drill in which students in a five-week novice class at the Washington Yacht Club (WYC) must sail toward an orange life preserver as if it were a person, a "man overboard," stop their boat and retrieve it.

The trick is to approach from the windward side, the side opposite the headwind, so when the person climbs aboard the wind will counter the additional weight to the leeward side of the craft. In a larger boat, picking up another body would hardly make a difference, but on a dinghy, capsizing is all too common.

It's also something the novice sailors must learn to deal with, along with how to rig a boat, set out to sea, tack (circling left with the wind at the portside) and jibe (the opposite of tacking).

In a novice lesson, none of these things are all that difficult -- according to the instructors, that is -- as each drill is performed in gentle breezes of up to seven knots (one knot equals 1.15 statute miles per hour). Intermediate and skipper ratings are awarded to students who can demonstrate the skills in brisker wind -- 12 to 15 knots and more than 15 knots, respectively. But to achieve a novice rating, the goals are somewhat lower:

"Can you rig a boat to get out on the water, sail like you know what you're doing and not cause damage?" explains Claudette Meyer, WYC vice commodore, who is also in charge of coordinating the lessons.

A sailor's paradise

Founded in 1949, the WYC is one of the oldest and most established student organizations at Washington. The club's membership -- which includes students, faculty and staff, as well as alumni -- fluctuates with the weather, peaking at around 400 in the spring and summer quarters and dropping to about 250 members in the colder months.

Members sign up because of a passion for or a budding interest in sailing, but the club's low cost is an added bonus. It costs $30 to $50 each quarter to maintain membership -- dirt cheap by yachting standards. In fact, many members are honorary Huskies who pay the alumni dues just so they can join the club as well. Jay Kenney, a University of Wisconsin graduate, believes the WYC to be "the best deal in town" when compared to the alternatives.

With more than 40 boats -- everything from single- and double-handed dinghies to catamarans to keelboats, some student-owned -- and an additional 20 sailboards, the WYC sails exclusively out of the Waterfront Activities Center (WAC), which is sandwiched between Husky Stadium and Union Bay.

Even if you can't tell a boom from a bowsprit, at least the view is splendid. Through the mouth of the bay lies Lake Washington, beyond which sit snow-capped peaks, looming over the nearby hills. Surrounding the bay are green bluffs, lined with lilies and wind-whipped seaweeds and peppered with tiny homes that crowd the water's edge.

And then there is the bay itself, with its erratic personality -- blustery one day, calm another. It is a playground for some, a proving ground for others.

Mishaps happen

Beneath a tangerine-and-silver sky, a half-dozen boats crisscross the bay during one of the last lessons in a five-week session for novice sailors, which ended earlier this month. Several sailors never do retrieve that elusive man overboard and rookie mistakes plague one boat in particular. Its rudder detaches halfway out to sea, requiring an instructor's assistance, and in an attempt to garner more speed, its two-man crew later tries hoisting a spinnaker -- a triangular sail at the front of the boat -- to no avail.

"There's almost enough wind to do it," observes Kenney, the lesson's instructor. "At least you're moving."

Still, things could have been worse. Last year, a boat "turtled" in a thick patch of lily pads, forcing its mast deep into the mud. Meyer kept the crew company until a whaler arrived to drag the boat upright. Novice students, especially the lighter ones, have a knack for capsizing in the bay as well, oftentimes near Lake Washington -- where they're not allowed -- sending passing drivers on the nearby Evergreen Point bridge into cell-phone frenzies.

While keeling over is usually not a cause for alarm, it can be quite costly, and painful -- especially when paired with an out of control boom in more than 20 knots of wind. On May 12, during a sailing regatta near the Columbia River Gorge, Will Pirrie, a member of the WYC's racing team, capsized and was floating in the water when his boat's sail caught wind and swung back hard. The boom whacked his head, resulting in a wound that required five staples.

"But stuff like that never happens," Pirrie says. "In my four years (racing on the team), I've never seen that happen."

Sailing is ...

"There's no perfection in sailing," says Adam Fuchs, a WYC member who first started sailing as a Boy Scout 10 years ago. There is always "the next level" to which a sailor strives, he adds, and every sailor has a different approach to how improvements can be made.

To Fuchs, "Sailing is all science" and includes elements of aerodynamics, hydrodynamics and physics.

Andrew Roberts, WYC commodore, agrees to some extent with Fuchs but sides more with "some famous Laser sailor" who said sailing a small boat in windy conditions is a grotesque combination of finesse and brute force.

"I'm not out there sailing with a calculator in my hand," Roberts says. "It is a science, and it's very helpful to know the physical concepts and have some knowledge of the physics behind what you're doing, but as far as knowing what to do instantly, that's an art form."

To others, sailing is more about competition than cruising comfortably. To them, sailing -- more or less -- is about speed.

"[Racing is] just like any sport," says Anne-Teague Landis, WYC rear commodore and co-captain of the racing team. "Once there's competition, more things are involved.

People on our team do enjoy cruising, but even when on bigger boats [they] are often racing."

Hawaii, ho!

During a mid-May practice, the racing team displays speed and fervor in each of its exercises and mock races -- staples of the team's tri-weekly practice sessions. From "follow the leader," in which a trail of six Flying Juniors -- two-person racing dinghies fueled by a pair of sails -- shadow a motorboat, to tacking drills to practice races, the team never lets up. One sailor even manages to be dumped from her boat.

All the while, team member Ryan Zehnder, who is overlooking everything from a small motorboat, is shouting commands: "Line up behind me!" he yells. "Left-hand windward mark! OK, there's a bunch of contact! Somebody's gotta do a circle!" (If one's hull strikes another boat during a race, the boat at fault must perform a 720 -- in practice, only a 360 -- before continuing with the race.)

Even on the calm, sun-glazed waters of Union Bay, controlled racing drills seem like chaos to the untrained eye. But despite the apparent disarray, the team knows what it's doing. Twelve of its members are slated to compete nationally in a regatta beginning today in Hawaii, representing the UW in women's, co-ed and team races in the competition, which will continue through June 7.

Ahh, the payoff

Whether you prefer tranquil waters or breakneck speeds, sailing clearly provides different rewards for different people. While Meyer prefers the peaceful seclusion offered by sailing alone, Fuchs favors the adrenaline rush of racing single-handed dinghies. Roberts relates to that, as he believes smaller craft provide an "instant gratification" that larger boats fail to deliver.

"Smaller boats are very responsive," he says. "They're great for learning to sail because the instant you make a controlled movement -- a slight change in sail trim or a slight change in rudder position -- you feel it instantly in the way the boat responds. You accelerate quickly. You're flirting with disaster a little bit more."

Just ask Pirrie about his staples. Yet even in low winds, sailing can be somewhat hazardous. In Union Bay alone, novice sailors are always at risk of drifting into lily pads, dropping a rudder or crashing into what WYC members call "dirtbergs" -- patches of seafloor peat that have risen to the surface. It took a massive iceberg to sink the Titanic, but a clump of sodden filth is often enough to dump a dinghy.

"You can always get into trouble if you try hard enough," Roberts says, which is why those pesky man-overboard drills may actually come in handy.

For more information on the WYC or the racing team, visit students.washington.edu/sailing.