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I recently took Lily bean out for her second sail since her initial launch in April.  I borrowed my parents truck again and headed out to lake san antonio alone since no one was interested in sailing with me.  I got to the lake and set up everything in record time which was 30 minutes.  I got her off the trailer with no problems and set out for a nice day on the lake.  I motored south east on the lake in search of some late morning winds to put Lily bean thru the paces and get more sailing experience.  No wind was to be had so I found a mooring and tied off to take a lunch break while just relaxing in the very nice California sun.  After 2 hours a gentle wind came up and i untied to take advantage of the breeze of maybe 5 knots.  I practiced tacking, running down wind, reaching, all the things that I wanted to see how Lily bean would handle.  She performed perfectly!  After sailing for an hour, the wind speed doubled and things started to get real exciting! (too exciting) .... I was not comfortable with how much the wind was building and starting to even gust...so I decided to sail to a calmer side of the lake to take down the sails, and then motor back to the dock with the wind since my 2 horse motor probably could not make much headway into the wind.  Lilybean was really flying now...I was making my way across the lake to find the lighter air and the chop was splashing off the side of the boat, but the cockpit was dry as a bone. (what a good design).  I was sailing pretty sharp upwind so if things got out of hand I could just steer into the wind to neutralize the sails and take them down.  I got halfway to my destination and the wind direction shifted and gusted suddenly at a right angle to the Lily bean and knocked her down :o ...throwing me overboard on the port side!  Wow...what now..I read the Stevenson plans to the word and heard of nothing telling me what to do if the boat gets knocked down.  After realizing that this was not a bad dream and that I had my hands full...I swam around Lily bean and grabbed onto the starboard rail and stood up on the keel to see if I could bring her back upright.  To my amazement she came back up but absolutely full of water ( up to the rails).  The wind gusted again and forced her over again,  this time she went completely upside down!  At this point I was sure that she was now heading to the bottom of the lake.  But no she is made from wood and wood floats!  A ski boat motored over to see if I was OK and three of the passengers dove into the water to help me flip her over and then a jet ski tied a rope to the bow and i told them to head toward shore so that we could bail her out.  Relieved at this point that I did not lose my boat, Several people on shore grabbed everything that was handy to start bailing.  An hour later the water was emptied from the Lily bean and after careful examination the only damage was to the rudder box and my Ego.  Several other nice boaters grabbed hatch covers and other various floating debris and brought them to me shore side.  I only lost a small tool box and the home depot plastic bucket that I brought for just such an  occaision ( but it just sank instead of the Lily bean).  The lake sherriff towed me to the dock and I put her back on the trailer and headed home with more sailing and lake experience than I really needed in one day! ;D
Well now I know the limits of the boat, and my skills to deal with them!  Lessons are learned the hard way sometimes... I need to get some reef points and learn to just take the sails down when conditions get nasty!  Now you all know that it is possible to "flip" the weekender by yourself while building or by sailing!

Sounds like fun Tracy.  You are right about reef points and every weekender should have two!  Practice getting them in as fast as safely possible before you need to really reef.  The weekender shouldn't tip over in most winds if you reef early.  the old saying that I live by is, "if you think, should I reef, it is likely past time".  Don't count on that motor either, it is better to be sailing reefed as long as it feels safe then running the motor if it hasn't the power to do the job.

I really can't stress enough the need for reef points, why they are not on the plan is beyond me.  Without them it is like driving a car in city traffic with the gas peddle stuck to the floor. I spend half my time sailing with the first reef in, and don't own a motor   I have been sailing small unballasted boats for over 25 years in all conditions and have never been over except on small racers, because of reef points, and maybe good luck early on (even caught in gale conditions).  You have the worse behind you now, keep learning and have fun.

Tracy:

I'm curious - did your cabin and forepeak fill with water too?  Were the gunwales under water when full?

I have a bit of paranoia about being able to bail out the boat so I've added a fair bit of floatation to mine.  I have 10 pool noodles stuffed behind the seat backs and in the transom, as well as using a 2"x2'X8' foam board to fill the forward part of the forepeak - which isn't very usable anyway.  I figure that gives me about 200+lbs of floatation.

I'm glad that you and your boat are OK and hopefully you survived telling the story to your spouse 

To help with floatation I also did some changes.  The bridge deck (step into the cabin) is higher then the plans called for and higher then the actual deck.  Hafl the area under the seat and the lazarete are water tight and the fore hatch doesn't open into the main cabin.  It all helps.

Last summer Denis'  weekender boat filled with rainwater to about 5 inches deep in the cabin and cockpit. It took me an hour to bail with a 12 volt bilge pump at the dock. I'd say you had plenty of bailing with a bucket Yikes!

I have one set of reefing points in the Vacationer, at 3 ft up from the boom. It takes up alot of sail area I've been glad I did, and probably reef too often, I don't want to put her turtle. I think righting her would be a major challenge. I've had enough close calls, and don't hesitate to drop sails, and motor on my 9.9HP Merc.

I too stuffed pool noodles behind the seats, I like the comfort of the extra floatation, and the space they occupy, that water can't.

You got quite a lesson on that sail, so glad that the outcome wasn't worse.

Greg

The Mickey Mouse bilge pumps you most often see in boats (500 GPH) can't keep up with a garden hose (no kidding), let alone a rain shower. If you're leaving them unattended, install the biggest pump you can find.

This article from a few years ago has made me especially paranoid.  Unfortunately I can't find the original http://www.messing-about.com/forums/inde...2879.0#top

It highlights my own worry about making sure that the boat will float with the gunwales above water after a severe knockdown.

After we righted the boat out on the lake, the only thing that was above water was the Cabin roof and windows, and seats were completely under water with only the gunwales out of the water.  The majority of the water was in the cockpit area with the cabin area holding about a foot of water that spilled over the cabin deck.  Yes the forepeak had water too but not much since the bow was sitting higher than the stern.  Some mods that I will be making will be to close off the forepeak from the cabin, and seal the underseat compartments to make them water tight....also putting in at least two reef points. 

To help with the water removal...several strong on lookers helped me lift the bow up to drain the water out the back over the transom once we towed it to shore.  All things considered the boat floated much better than I would have thought without any additional floatation or sealed compartments to help with bouyancy.  It was amazing how quickly the water was bailed out with just sand buckets and sponges that I brought with me. 

No experience is bad Tracy if you learn from it  
Your changes will go a long way to adding to your safety and comfort.

Andrew, (and Tracy),six years ago or so I got a nasty surprise just after I launched my boat. A particularly enthusiastic thunderstorm came through at night, you know the kind where the temperature drops fifteen degrees and the hair stands up on your neck... anyway when the lightning subsided I went to the boat to see how she was faring and found her completely full of water. The cockpit had filled up, water had made its way past the little oval hatches on the seat fronts, trickled through the little bulkheads inside the seats and into the cabin, and through the openings in the front bulkhead and into the forepeak, and also back into the lazarette. It took me hours to bail it out, first I had to bail the forepeak into the cabin, then the cabin into the cockpit, etc. A friend had told me I should not seal internal bulkheads in order to allow air to circulate in the hull and keep the wood from getting wet. Well, that didn't work. >

So, first I squirmed into the storage area under each seat from the cabin side, and sealed those bulkheads, then I put a rubber gasket around the doorway (companionway? :), then eventually, fed up with having to mop up inside the aft storage space under the seats, I glued the hatches shut and replaced them with screw-out deck plates. This summer I'm going to put drains in the low part of the deck attached to short hoses through the side, to drain off water that pools on the deck. Unfortunately I wasn't forward-thinking enough to build the side rail with scuppers. Well it's been a long battle that didn't need to happen in the first place. If I was going to build the boat over again, I would make the sides flush with the deck and then have a separate toerail to allow water to just wash overboard, I would have used screw-out deckplates on the storage hatches in the first place, I would have made the lip of the cabin doorway at deck level like Ryerson's.

Tracy, when I took sailing lessons as a boy, one day's worth of lessons was devoted to deliberately flipping our boats (Albacores) and then practicing righting them and bailing them. Looks like you gave yourself the same lesson! Now you know what to watch out for.