It’s Getting Cold

I hate to put the boat away for the New England winter. Each fall I’m faced with the option of frostbiting or laying up the Laser until next spring. I’ve done winter sailing seven or eight years; I love the cold; and I really enjoy the numerous starts I can get in a saltwater, frostbite series. When new sailors ask me what I’m going to do, I separate the question into, “What are you going to do Jay?” and “What should I (the new sailor) do?”

If you have any tolerance for the cold, if you want to improve by leaps and bounds before next summer, if you can afford a drysuit, and if you can afford to invest most of your Sundays (or Saturdays) sailing all winter, I’d advise you to sign up and sail. The exception might be Masters Sailors who is still at the stage of trying to keep the Laser upright; it’s hard on old joints to sail nimbly after spending time in “ice water.” I’d either pick my days with lower wind speeds and warmer air, or I’d skip the “opportunity” until you’ve had enough time in the boat.

One spring I figures out that I had gotten over 60 starts during the past active summer sailing season, but during the frostbite season I had had over 80 starts. I went into my spring regattas ready to perform at a high level and I had nice success. Those four-season sailing years were my transition from someone who raced sailboats to a sailboat racer.

But I am going to sit out this winter season. I have a minor condition (Raynaud's Phenomenon) where my blood capillaries spasm in the cold. In practical terms this means that I lose feeling in my fingers and toes around the second or third race. From that point on I’m vulnerable to frostbite (the medical kind) and my boat handling skills begin to look clumsy. My vulnerability to sailing with the mast horizontal to the water increases, and that further increases my vulnerability to frostbite.

To those of you with similar problems I’d just says that you should expect to test the waters and be prepared. I’ve found that the best gloves don’t allow me to handle the lines adequately and encourage flips, anything other than the best gloves don’t keep my hands warm enough. Similarly, the best boots are too clumsy to tack smoothly and the next best simply don’t keep my toes warm enough. The solutions I’ve found decrease the fun of sailing to the point of too little reward.

This might be a time to cross train on a bigger dryer boat, just watch that you don’t get lulled into thinking that this is real sailing. ;-)

Jay Livingston