Moment: The Great Super Chicken Caper

Porter Bay
N 44 13.753 W 73 19.049

I'm sure you've heard the expression, "My life is measured by hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror." The expression may be a bit overstated but it is essentially true. A life's memories consist primarily of a few choice moments. When we approached retirement, Libby and I thought back on life's choice moments and we realized that very many of them were moments on sailboats. This is the story of one of those moments. I'm posting this one today because we are anchored at the exact spot described in the story.

One day in the first week of October, I found myself sailing down Lake Champlain. For crew, I had my father Jerry, my close friend Walt, and my oldest son John. We were barrelling down the lake at breakneck speed under a spinnaker.

Murphy's law had prevailed that day. As soon as we raised the spinnaker the wind started picking up. We traveled faster and faster as the wind and waves increased. Whenever it blows from the north on Lake Champlain, the choppy waves build up rapidly. Now the wind was blowing 20-25 and the waves were 4-5 feet.

The wind was far too strong to use a spinnaker. Nevertheless, I didn't dare to change course very much or to try to take the spinnaker down. I feared loosing control and running over the sail. I was battling the weather helm. One thing I hate about spinnakers is that if you let the boat veer from wind dead astern to wind in the hind quarter, the amount of weather helm builds rapidly from none to a lot. It is a positive feedback effect. The more the boat points up to the wind, the more the weather
helm. I knew from experience that if I allowed the wind to get up to the beam that the weather helm would overpower the rudder and that we would suffer a knockdown.

Therefore, I was between a rock and a hard place. There was already too much wind yet I didn't dare do anything about it. As the waves became large, the boat started surfing. A Clipper 26 is a very light weight boat and under those circumstances she could actually plane. As a wave lifted the stern the speed would pick up and spray would start flying from the bow wave. My knot meter had a maximum of 15 knots and it would max out. Of course it would only last for 2-3 seconds until the wave
passed underneath. Only once did I manage to surf skillfully enough to stay with a wave for as much as 5-8 seconds.

Anyhow, I had a plan for how to escape from our predicament. Right ahead of us was the entrance to Porter Bay. Porter bay was one of my favorite anchorages. It offers protection from wind in almost all directions. My plan was to enter the bay, then make a sweeping U turn. That would bring us in to the wind shade of a point, and also behind a long concrete pier that would screen us from the waves. I told the crew about the plan, and instructed them on what to do. I would hold the helm, while
Walt would detach the spinnaker pole at the bow, and then prepare to anchor. Jerry would grab the bottom of the sail and keep it from going in to the water. John was to lower the spinnaker once the pole was detached.

So here we went, flying at what seemed like jet speed for a sailboat. We may have been doing 8-10 knots when entering the bay. That's way faster than a 26 foot boat is able to travel. As planned, I made our big U turn. As planned we sailed in to calm waters with no wind and no waves. As planned, Walt detached the pole and Jerry grabbed the bottom of the sail. I tied off the tiller in preparation for going forward to lend a hand to the others.

I'm sure you've heard the expression, "Hours of terror punctuated by moments of sheer terror." This was one of those moments. What I'm about to describe happened in just a few seconds, although it seems like an eternity in my memory.

An eddy in the wind unexpectedly came around the point and blew at us from the south (that's the opposite direction to the prevailing wind.) The puff of wind caught the spinnaker and inflated it like a giant parachute. My poor father Jerry did what he was asked to do and held on to the bottom of that sail tenaciously. His feet started lifting off the deck. John leapt to his aid and wrapped his arms around Jerry's knees.

At the same time, our residual velocity plus the push of the wind puff behind us was pushing us toward the shore. We were about to run aground on the rocks in seconds if I couldn't stop us. I spotted what was happening, turned around and sprang back to the cockpit. The tiller was tied down so I tried to start the outboard motor to stop our forward motion. Thing's were not destined to end that easily.

I gave the motor starting cord a mighty tug. It started first time (good motor). I spun it around backward to apply reverse thrust. You see, the reverse gear in that outboard motor was very ineffective. To get significant reverse thrust I had to turn the motor 180 degrees. But as I turned it this time the rubber fuel line broke off right at the motor nib. Starved for fuel, the motor stopped.

With only seconds to go before disaster it was time for lightning action. I didn't stop to think. I spun the motor back forward again. I grabbed my trusty Mora knife from the sheath on my belt. (Any really serious sailor should always wear a very sharp sheath knife.) I sliced off the broken end of the fuel hose and jammed the remaining hose back on to the nib. I started the engine. (Thank God it started again on the first pull.) I whipped it around 180 degrees. I applied full power and stopped
our forward motion just seconds before we were about to crash.

Then I turned around and looked forward again. Walt had joined John and managed to pull Jerry back on to the deck. Just about then, the puff of wind stopped and the sail fell slack. The rest went smoothly. We lowered the spinnaker and we motored back away from the shore a bit and dropped the anchor. Then I told the rest of the crew the part of the story they hadn't seen. You see, they were so occupied in rescuing Jerry that they were not even aware of the near disaster with the rocks on shore.

Later that night we all joked and swapped stories. The news of recent weeks had something to do with an NFL football team's mascot called Super Chicken. Our joke evolved into visions of Jerry, being nicknamed Super Chicken, flying up in to the sky and disappearing over the mountains underneath a colorful spinnaker chute. That's why I call it the Great Super Chicken Caper.