Playing with coloured sails

Maintaining an hourglass-shaped balloon and ratcheting up the log numbers

- Marsali Taylor

When I got Karima, she was a hard-worked racing yacht with a full set of sails, including three coloured ones, which have had very little use since.

I did have a notion in the early days that having my husband, Philip, crewing meant he could helm while I messed about on the foredeck (this was before I realised he was a Non-Sailing Spouse). The spinnaker is a beautiful rainbow-striped one, and I didn't think I could work with it single-handed, so taking him out was my chance to try it.

I didn't have experience with yacht spinnakers. Some 20 years before, as a teenager, I'd crewed in a Hornet dinghy which involved handling a spinnaker from a trapeze. I put up the pole, my helm, Colin, hoisted it from aft, and then I simultaneously swung myself out and got it flying. It was a very satisfying feeling.

I didn't see why a yacht spinnaker should be any more difficult-easier, in fact, as you'd have both feet flat on the deck, instead of being suspended from a wire. Hook the pole onto the mast, shove it out continuing the line of the boom, rough-fix uphaul, downhaul and guy. At this point, Philip began to get restive. "I don't think we should be doing this. I don't know what I'm doing."