In these two videos you will see examples of a broach. This is a situation when a sailboat unintentionally and involuntary jibes or changes course towards the wind, resulting in a loss of directional control and the sailboat’s rudder becoming ineffective. You can easily get in a broach situation with the wind and waves from behind. In both video situations, the spinnaker suddenly gets a gust of wind and heels the boat hard over to starboard. This also causes the mainsail to come hard over to starboard (jibe), and you are in a broach situation. The broach in the first video is so severe, it causes three crew members to go overboard. To get out of this situation the skipper in the first video lets the wind out of the spinnaker by releasing a sheet, and in the second video the head of the spinnaker sail unintentionally rips off the top of the mast. This both causes the sailboats to come back upright. The next best thing to do to get back to controlled sailing, is to head into the wind, and not continuing downwind, to avoid another jibe.
