Ogden Insights: Things To Do In Utah: Sailing (and Capsizing) on Deer Creek Reservoir

My father flew into town and invited us to go sailing as a family on Deer Creek Reservoir. Our family owns a Hobicat catamaran which has proven to be a very fun diversion on light breezy weekends.

However, it has been quite a while since since I have manned the Hobicat...4 years to to be exact. As it turns out, it's been quite a while since my father has been out on the boat too. The first chore was for us to put the mast up and set up the rigging.

It took us about an hour or so to set the mast and hoist the sails into place.

After getting everything set we took the Hobicat out for a trial run to make sure we remembered our sailing skills.

It took us a few minutes to remember how to operate the craft. After a run across the reservoir and back we figured it was time to load some of the family on board.

Wynnie and Sophie were eager to go for a ride. They hopped on board and were having a good time. We ran across the reservoir and were headed back. We were moving a quite a clip since the breeze had picked up and we had figured out how to optimize or sails for speed. As we came to shore we realized we moving to quickly and coming in at the wrong angle to the beach. I was steering and aborted our landing attempt and I turned our boat away from shore. We already had centrifugal momentum with our weight on the outside of the turn. Unfortunately, the quick turn meant that all our body weight was also suddenly on the downwind side of the boat. The breeze picked up and the boom swung around and knocked the tiller (the thing that controls the rudders) out of my hands and locked the rudders into a hard turn. I grabbed the tiller but the force of the boom was to great to overcome. All these forces combined, capsized the boat, and dumped us all into the water.

The kids were my biggest concern. We probably had 3 seconds between the boom locking the rudders and the boat being sideways with us in the water. Life jackets saved the day for us. Also, the kindness of other folks helping us get the kids to shore was priceless.

The kids panicked at first but we were able to calm them down once they realized they weren't sinking. Thank you to Duane for helping us get the kids to shore.

Once the kids were safe on dry land the next chore was to get the boat righted. Hobicats are actually designed to be "rightable" by the passengers. There is a giant elastic band on the bottom of the boat that is supposed to allow the pilot to tip the boat upright using his body weight as leverage. Unfortunately, the weight of the water on the sails and perhaps my lack of girth kept us from accomplishing that. We even had help from some strangers and couldn't get the boat righted with our combined weight. Fortunately, a jet ski provides just the right amount of pull to upright a Hobicat.

Here is a picture of the rigging that controls the boat. As you can see, the boom rope runs along a track on the back of the boat. Its path intersects with the tiller and that is where we got into trouble. The change in wind direction caused the boom to swing on that track which put is in the drink. Had we anticipated the change in wind direction we would have been fine. Lesson learned.