Talk about ‘shiver me timbers’–sending reverberations through the hull, spars, and body–I’ve mentioned “knockdown” while sailing; two that readily come to mind. A ‘knockdown’ is when the mast and other spars are nearly touching or in the water (wind, of course, can cause one as can huge seas), water over the gunwales (gunn’ls) threaten flooding in the companionway and foundering. A knockdown and potential “roll” is most feared. Winds of this magnitude can bring the spars and standing rigging crashing down; a roll can strip the rigging from its station, leaving an entanglement of sails, lines, shrouds, stays (latter two cables; old days, manila or hemp) endangering crew. Rigging is cut free, generally with bolt cutters to prevent puncturing the hull; all-in-all very dangerous.
(With the sails horizontal to the water, the wind “spills off” over the top; no longer any push over; the keel with about 1/2 the boat’s weight, counters and tries to right the boat. Easing the sheets should allow the boat back upright. On the other hand, if a huge sea happens by at this point, the ship might completely roll over.)
During a knockdown, one can simply de-power the boat by easing the sheets (lines that trim the sails), or at the onset of a a knockdown, head up into the wind. To accomplish anything during all this while one is healed over, it is difficult keeping yourself on board, much less tending to the precarious situation; tethers (safety lines) and harnesses should have been donned in preparation if conditions appear threatening.
Many of you sunfish sailboat sailors, and the like, experience knockdowns far more often than offshore sailboats (a small boat is less forgiving than larger ones; catamarans, e.g. Hobie, even less forgiving). Often you react fast enough by heading up or easing the sheets with a quick recovery. Often the wind be too much and over you go–the boat “turtled”. A little practice and a small boat can be righted quickly, even from a turtle position.
On one particular knockdown while sailing my 22′ sloop, “Quiet Riot”, a squall hit me while sailing single-handed approximately six miles out in Lake Michigan, off of Two Rivers. Forecasts warned of storms, but the skies, though overcast with threatening rain, weren’t of great concern… until a rain shower started, becoming a downpour and a sudden strong gust of wind that knocked me down (I was overpowered m carrying too much sail. climbing to a sitting position of the gunn’l (more-like on the outside of the hull, I quickly eased the sheets, the boat responding by righting itself. I hauled in the sheets, hardening up the main, when a second, stronger, unexpected gust knocked me down, this time snapping my mast above the spreaders (aluminum arms reaching out right and left about two-thirds up the mast). I was able to get everything back on board and secured to the deck, engine fired up and a long ride back to the marina. A cut toe my only Boy Scout badge.
The other knockdown I won’t forget was on the 53′ racing sloop “ENCOUNTER” with six crew members caught in a squall in middle of northern Lake Michigan in the dark of the night losing the head sail from its 77′ mast as the mains’l ripped and water coming over the gunn’ls rushing near and by the companionway as the deck is nearly vertical while we scrambled to drop the sails with the wind roaring and ripping through the rigging at 50+ mph knocking the 2′ seas flat creating spindrift streaking horizontally stinging our skin and all the time getting the auxiliary fired-up as quickly as can be all at the same time. End of story. Roger
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General Posts | Roger Birr April 29, 2010 | 
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