“If you do, you’d better let me know,” Jerry said, “because I sure don’t feel very full of ideas now.”
Sandy wrinkled his brow and strained at his memory. There seemed to be some fact, some idea half remembered from all Jerry had told him, that ought to help. He looked astern, and the sight of Jones’s sloop bearing down on them and swiftly closing the gap between the two racing boats, seemed to have just the stimulating effect he was looking for.
“I know!” he almost shouted. “Didn’t you say that we can do better on a reach than a boat with a spinnaker can do downwind?”
“That’s right,” Jerry said doubtfully. “But we have to sail a downwind course to get to shore.”
“Well, what’s your hurry?” Sandy asked. “Why don’t we put off going ashore just now? I mean, if we take off on a reach, maybe we can lose Jones in the dark before he can change sails to follow us. If we can just put some distance between us, we can head back for shore later!”
Jerry clapped Sandy on the shoulder and shouted, “You’re right!” Then he looked back at Jones’s boat, clear in shape, but not in detail. “I wish I could see how he has his spinnaker sheeted, but I can’t make it out. Still, let’s just take a chance.” He looked at Sandy in admiration. “Boy, you’re sure catching on fast! That was a real racing sailor’s idea!”
Carefully selecting the best course to give their boat the most speed and to lose the least time in putting about, Jerry instructed Sandy.
“We’re going to jibe,” he said, “but don’t worry. This is going to be deliberate, not accidental. It’s the accidental jibes that wreck the rigging. We’re going to put about this way so’s not to waste time shifting the genoa jib to the other side. As soon as I’ve got that whisker pole ready to come off, we’ll do it.”
He went forward, and after a moment’s work, quickly returned to the cockpit. “Ready now,” Jerry said. “I’ll take the tiller and you take the mainsheet. As I start to put about, you haul in on the sheet, until the boom is right over the keel of the boat. Then I’ll put her hard over, and you let the sail out evenly on the other side until I say stop. Got it?”
Sandy wasn’t sure, but he figured that this was no time for more detailed instruction on the art of the deliberate jibe. Holding the mainsheet, and his breath, he silently hoped that he knew what he was doing. One mistake now—the wrong kind of jibe, that could wreck the rigging—would surely put them back in Jones’s hands.