Today was my first day going out on a boat meant for 2 people, but I sailed it single-handed. I am considering getting a sailboat but wanted to see if it was not too difficult to sail a boat with both a mainsail and a jib single-handed.

It turns out that it is not too hard. At first I had assumed that I could just leave the jib rolled up and pilot the boat with only the mainsail, but the staff told me that without the jib I would have a real hard time sailing upwind. So I said OK and went for it.

The boat I sailed was an RS Feva. I asked the staff if it was similar to the Laser Vago (another 2-person boat), but he said they were quite different. I could see from the rigging of the kicker that it was not meant for serious racing, but I am not overly concerned about being a speed demon so that didn’t bother me very much.

At first I was having a hard time setting the jib right without losing a grip on the main sheet or the tiller, but I got the hang of it after a few minutes and then I was off.

The key was, whenever attempting a tack, to get the mainsail and tiller sorted out first, then move on to set the jib to the opposite side after the boar stabilizes. That was you avoid being too stressed out and trying to too many things at once.

So sailing upwind and getting to close-hauled felt pretty comfortable. But with the trapeze toe-strap I did feel that if I stayed hiked out too far for too long, that I would be unable to get back into the boat easily. So I didn’t do much hard-core close-hauled hiked out stuff.

Downwind was a different story. Unless the wind direction changed whenever I attempted to go to a reach or downwind, I felt it difficult to manage the boat, unsure how the jib should be set and worried that the mainsail would jibe at any moment. I will need to work on that, in fact I might need to pony up for a lesson with an instructor to get better sailing with the wind with a main and jib.

After almost getting decapitated by a landing seaplane, I sailed back to the shore downwind and made a calm landing without too much trouble.

So the verdict? I’m not sure if I enjoy the added work of controlling the jib single-handed, but there does not seem to be too much choice if I want to sail a boat that can take more than one person. I think a private lesson or two might get me more comfortable to the point of being ready to invest in a slightly larger sailboat as my first boat.

I guess time will tell!