Handing the tiller - Day 11 - 30 Day Haiku Challenge

Handling the Tiller
Trimming the sails for speed
Sailing is teamwork

Dedicated to my beloved and much missed Morgan 22 sailboat, Dark Secret.

She was outfitted for racing by the previous owner, who had won a sizeable number of trophies sailing her, and she was very fast for her size; notably, the Morgan 22 and the Morgan 34 had the same hull design, along with the Morgan 42, and were among the fastest boats in their respective classes.

She was also the vessel on which I had some of the most fun adventures I ever had on the water. Morgan sailboats are awesome, and built to take heavy weather, with shallow drafts to handle the shifting sands in and around Tampa Bay, where they were designed and built by Charley Morgan.

I learned to sail on a Morgan 34 as a young teen, owned by friends of mine in the L.A. area, that they ordered from Florida, and then had shipped to Holland to have it Dutch rigged. With Dutch rigging, you can lower the mast while under full sail, thus designed for clearing the many bridges in the Netherlands, and practical nearly everywhere.

Their Morgan also had some of the most amazing winches it has ever been my pleasure to sail with; their Morgan 34 remains the only sailboat on which I've been able to raise the mainsail to its full height, singlehanded. We did a lot of sailing off of L.A. and Ventura counties, and sailed a number of times off of San Francisco, and around the sea lion rookeries of the Farallon Islands. I wouldn't trade a minute of it.

Many years later, my then-husband and I bought our own Morgan, Dark Secret, and I discovered that they were built in Largo, Florida, a straight shot about ten minutes down Bryan Dairy Road from my then-home.

On Dark Secret, I could raise the main to within two or three inches of the top of the mast, but even if I hung onto the mainsheet with both feet off the deck, I simply didn't weigh enough to raise it the rest of the way. C'est la vie.

Sailboat racing is the best. It takes brains, wits and strength, not to mention quick thinking and reflexes, and a lot of knowledge to win a race. The more you learn about sailing and sail trimming, the better you'll do, and the more fun you'll have in the process. It's also one heck of a great workout. It is not a sport for the lazy.

I'm including a video from YouTube of a Morgan 22 overtaking an O'Day 22, which in a race would be in the same non-spinnaker class, which will give a good idea of the difference in speed that really good hull design, not to mention a crew who knows how to sail, can make. Of course, this is not a race, and the crew of the O'Day are not competing.