The following happened to me a few weeks ago and I still can't figure out what I should do in these circumstances:

Sailing off the wind on a beam reach we're running down the beach hauling gluteous maximus...wind at about 15knots. 4 to 6' waves are coming from nearly the same direction and would be quartering off our stern if we were sitting still. When coming down the larger waves the bows are digging in hard into the back of the next wave. Four pitch poles and a lot of cussing later, we gave up.

Question: how do you compensate for gusts and/or the large waves at this attitude? If you turn downwind to depower, you're steering deeper into the trough and harder into the back of the next wave. If you turn up to ease the angle into the trough, you're powering up the boat by going into a reach. Will maintaining boat direction but hardening up the sails accomplish the depowering needed? My initial reaction would be to steer up at a higher angle to the waves and trim your sails carefully to depower on the reach.

I had a crew that had never been on a sailboat before so I was a little leary to put him in a situation where he had to constantly react - although in hindsight, that probably would have been better than the four capsizes (BTW, he's still itching to go again). The times I did react and try to steer down, I think I was doing so too late - we were racing and I was coaching him too much and not paying enough attention to our position with the waves.