Way back in the dark ages of the early 1980s, when I first happened upon a skipper foolish enough to take me offshore, there were few labor-saving devices on your typical cruising sailboat. In fact, I was one of them. There was no roller furling on that particular 47ft cutter, just a seemingly bottomless stack of hanked-on sails that lived in a dank lazarette reeking of mildew, turpentine and diesel, the kind of cocktail that only wooden-boat lovers find intoxicating.
The boat was “handraulic,” as the skipper loved to say, and a heavy beast she was to work, too; we toted sailbags back and forth like ants, unbagged, hanked, hoisted, dropped, unhanked and flaked sails, and dreaded the call for the giant spinnaker—fun to set but oh what a drag…
