“Did someone say parasail?” his head popped up through the cabin hatch, just like a prairie dog popping up out of it’s hole.
Michael and I looked at each other and burst into laughter.
“What?!” Jacob exclaimed.
“It’s nothing, just the way you popped up. It’s like you were waiting for this.”
He grinned, “Yeah, I felt the wind shift and wondered how long we would wait before putting it up. I wasn’t really asleep and then I heard you two talking.”
Putting up a parasailor at night is not something that a lot of sailors do. It involves leaving the cockpit in the dark. You can’t always see if your lines are dragging. It can be done safely, but a lot of people choose to not take that risk.
The wind had shifted about an hour before. It was slowly coming from behind. By the time I got Michael to discuss our options, the wind was coming from about 130 degrees. We could’ve adjusted the mainsail, but we decided the better option was to drop the mainsail, run only on the genoa and then motor sail.
Neither of us really wanted to do that. That meant listening to the engines all night. Or at least until the wind shifted again. But the wind kept shifting. Still moving to our stern.
When Michael mentioned the parasail and Jacob popped up, we decided on that. Fire up the engines. Furl the genoa. Head into the wind and drop the mainsail. Return to your course. Put up the parasail and, boom. You’re onto some calm sailing again.
The biggest danger in this process is the chance of someone falling overboard. The sidedecks, especially the with cockpit covering down, on this boat were narrow. So I said I would manage the sheets.
Michael and Jacob clipped in and headed to the foredeck to get out the parasailor and put it up.
The whole process took about 20 minutes. In the minimal moonlight, the sail was visible. Once we killed the engines, there was an amazing quiet that came across the boat. The only sound that was heard was the fiberglass hull cutting through the water. The sail was filled, so there wasn’t even any flapping of sail. Just quiet water churning next to the boat, looking over the side, the bioluminescence was starting to become visible again.
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