Something a little different

OK, not about the Mariner this time, but a few notes on a different sort of sailing. My long time sailing buddy, Dean, invited me out for a sail on his new Vanguard 15. I showed up at the same place we visited last week with the Mariner where we had decided not to launch on account of very high wind. Well, the wind was screaming again that day. Confident in each other's ability and well suited up in wetsuits, pfds, etc. We put the boat out into the carquinez straits. Wow! The boat was flying (literally at one point thanks to a very large powerboat wake) planing upwind and truly screaming off the wind with a wall of spray pounding the forward crew (me.) That's probably the fastest I've gone in a sailboat since racing a Thistle on Huntington Lake in high school. Later, checking the reports from the nearest weather bouy, I found that we had experienced winds at 25 knots gusting to 30. It was a wild ride. And yes, we did capsize once. All was going well, and then bam! We lost the edge. Boat flipped and turtled pretty quick. Took a while for the newbie to figure out how to leverage himself up on the rail, but we were off and running again without too much trouble. Good experience to know that we can handle the boat (even upside down) in that kind of blow.