November 29, 2009
We've gotten quite a bit of actual sailing in these last few days. And every time it's been amazing. My momma and sister came down for Thanksgiving and brought delicious foods. We had a plan to goto Catalina for the big T-day, but we haven't been able to complete our dinghy so we would be pretty cut off from the actual island, only able to sail around it and take in its views. So we decided to just take her out for a ride on turkey day.
The sailing was superb out there. There were very few boats out in the straight, so we could do whatever we pleased. Right when we got out of the lee of the headlands, our genoa heeled us over and we gained speed up to about 7.5 knots. Along with having great wind, we had wildlife companions with us the whole way. At one point, a whale surfaced about one hundred yards off our bow and we also sailed through a pod of dolphins who just loved leaping at our bow, much to our delight. At one point we got Alice steering, making her a bona fide sailorgirl.
Soon after, she was exhausted and went to go sleep in the fo'c'sle. We continued making our way back and Dan, thinking of the amazing winds we could take beam on (providing maximum speed), decided we should make a tack. We did so and hit about a 30 degree heel that swiftly moved everything in the cabin to the other side. Alice popped her head out of the hatch, having her world completely turned around, and said "That can't be good". To which Dan exclaimed, "No! It's amazing!". Here's how heeled over that 160% genoa got us.
It was great fun and the day finished off with an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving dinner prepared by my momma and sista and brought hundreds of miles to us.
While there, my sister developed an affinity for the gigantic harbor seals, demanding I take pictures of them together. So I did, and I got a pretty cute one. Can you tell who's who?
Recently I've taken to mind the items that were giving us trouble on the shakedown. Being the deckmonkey, I noticed the sail handling mechanisms' malfunctioning. I fixed the halyard winch trouble by taking them apart, lubricating, and greasing them. A wonderful procedure involving me taking globs of grease on my finger and shoving it inside the bearings. Another task was lubrication the mainsail track. This one involved me climbing up and down the mast spraying 4 coats of Sail Kote. I snapped you guys one more shot while I was up there:
We've gotten quite a bit of actual sailing in these last few days. And every time it's been amazing. My momma and sister came down for Thanksgiving and brought delicious foods. We had a plan to goto Catalina for the big T-day, but we haven't been able to complete our dinghy so we would be pretty cut off from the actual island, only able to sail around it and take in its views. So we decided to just take her out for a ride on turkey day.
The sailing was superb out there. There were very few boats out in the straight, so we could do whatever we pleased. Right when we got out of the lee of the headlands, our genoa heeled us over and we gained speed up to about 7.5 knots. Along with having great wind, we had wildlife companions with us the whole way. At one point, a whale surfaced about one hundred yards off our bow and we also sailed through a pod of dolphins who just loved leaping at our bow, much to our delight. At one point we got Alice steering, making her a bona fide sailorgirl.
Soon after, she was exhausted and went to go sleep in the fo'c'sle. We continued making our way back and Dan, thinking of the amazing winds we could take beam on (providing maximum speed), decided we should make a tack. We did so and hit about a 30 degree heel that swiftly moved everything in the cabin to the other side. Alice popped her head out of the hatch, having her world completely turned around, and said "That can't be good". To which Dan exclaimed, "No! It's amazing!". Here's how heeled over that 160% genoa got us.
It was great fun and the day finished off with an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving dinner prepared by my momma and sista and brought hundreds of miles to us.
While there, my sister developed an affinity for the gigantic harbor seals, demanding I take pictures of them together. So I did, and I got a pretty cute one. Can you tell who's who?
Recently I've taken to mind the items that were giving us trouble on the shakedown. Being the deckmonkey, I noticed the sail handling mechanisms' malfunctioning. I fixed the halyard winch trouble by taking them apart, lubricating, and greasing them. A wonderful procedure involving me taking globs of grease on my finger and shoving it inside the bearings. Another task was lubrication the mainsail track. This one involved me climbing up and down the mast spraying 4 coats of Sail Kote. I snapped you guys one more shot while I was up there:
Love your blog... very interesting even to a landlubber like me... keep em comin.
ReplyDeleteyour sister and the seal...same facial expression....crazy shots too from up on the mast and when the boat is on its side
ReplyDeleteLove the shot of your sister and the sea lion!
ReplyDeleteno updates recently....have you left yet? are you ever leaving?
ReplyDelete