I needed speed to turn into the wind, but if I moved fast I would smash into the rock ahead of me. Finally I picked up a gust and briefly lost full control of my ship, but in doing so I slipped leeward away from the rock on my left and was able to cruise past it.

I know very little about sailing, as one can probably tell by the misuse of nautical terms above, but it felt like a passage from a Patrick O'Brien book (say, Desolation Island) or when he's trying to run a gauntlet into a harbor.