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I got up this morning after spending the night on Sea Puppy in her slip and stuck my head out. It was still early though light. There was no breeze at all and the water in the marina was like glass. I grabbed my camera and took a few shots.. Here are a couple that I particularly liked. Well I was supposed to have a full boat today.. but everyone cancelled out on me. So I went out by myself 🙂 All the work I have put in changing the running rigging and controlls is really paying off. Sea Puppy is now very easy to single hand. The wind was blowing around 10 to 12 knots off the coast and the seas were minimal at about 1 to 2 feet. I sailed for a little while then came in and anchored out with LC Marie and Lickety Split… We spent the afternoon scrubbing our boats bottoms and hanging out. Nice time… I installed a new cam cleat on the starboard cabin top for the new topping lift I installed in the mast. I used it this weekend sailing and it works like a champ. I also replaced the old cam cleat on the port side cabin top. It was getting old and the bearings in it were crumbling away. It was not easy installing the new one on starboard.. I couldn’t reach where the bolts came down through the cabin top. It was several inches up under the fiberglass headliner. In the end I drilled a couple 5/8ths inch holes through the headliner to get the nuts on the bolts coming down from above. The replacement one on port was also difficult to get to the nuts on it because of the headliner.. However I was able to flex it down and use a needle nose pair of vise grips to grab them and then unscrew the bolt from above.. Time to install starboard one 1.5 hours… it was a bear even with the holes in the headliner.. Time to replace port one about 20 minutes.. though not easy it went in quickly. I bedded both of them with 3M 4200. Oh and in case you are wondering the one on port is used for the spinnaker pole lift.
Oh my, my, my… what a beautifull day.. I woke up about 7am to 69 degree air and blue blue skies. It felt good. I got working and got the roller furling finished and the stantion base replaced between waking up and just after breakfast. See last post for that story. I invited Mike and Cary to go sailing with me and Hans but Carey had vehicle issues and Mike was getting ready to leave the country for work. So it was just me and Hans… The forcast was for 15 to 20 knots of wind and around 4ft seas.. what we got were 12 to 14 knots of wind and maybe 2ft seas.. We had a great time. The roller furling worked great.. the smaller furling line plus the new hardware to handle it worked increadably well. There was no snarled up line at the furling drum and the sail went in and out with ease. We were out for around 6 hours. 🙂 what a nice day.. the temp was in the mid 80’s and the wind was blowing.. lots of high fluffy clouds that gave some shade throughout the day. I got back in from anchoring out this morning and went to breakfast with other members of the sailing club. I planned to get up with hans and go sailing. After breakfast I went down to the boat and started putting the fairleads on the stantions on the port side of sea puppy and also the turning block with cam cleat attached to the toerail on port to secure the furling line…. Hans showed up about then and sat down on the dock as I got the two fairleads on and the small stantion mounted block roughly mounted.. About then the clouds which had been closing in all morning started to mist rain over us. Gradually increasing to a heavier steady rain. Hans had big golf umbrela he put up and I rigged the umbrella I keep on the boat to the main sheet and boom so I could sit in the hatch and stay dry. We sat and talked and watched the ran come down over the marina for a couple hours. 🙂 another cup of hot chocolate went down nicely as well as we sat there. I got down to the boat about 7:30 or 8:00 pm and it was still light out. So just spur of the moment I decided to motor out to waities island and anchor out for the evening. One of those deep seated needs/desires of mine is to do this sort of thing. Only I always seem to just end up doing the day trips going out and sailing. When I invite people out they always need to be back to make that date in the evening or take care of the dogs or any one of a thousand things that people are responcible for. I understand it and even have my things that I have to go do in lieu of hanging out on the boat sometimes, but this evening I didn’t have anything and there was no one else to worry about. Talk about that feeling of ultimate freedom.. Well this morning before going to breakfast I rigged up the lazy jacks and tested them out.. No pictures yet but I think they will be a big help… one thing I don’t like is that with them on you can’t get a neat flake on the boom.. however they do mostly contain the sail to get it down quick if not super neat and tied down. When not in use they pull out of the way under the boom and down the side of the mast. Judy and I went out on Sea Puppy yesterday afternoon… we got a late start and there was no wind and mild thunderstorms rolling in. We kept hoping it would get better but after getting drizzled on several times and then after we got to the jetties having a thunderstorm go over we decided to just anchor up for a while and kick back with a couple of mugs of hot chocolate… . I really recomend swiss miss chocolate sensations instant hot chocolate.. if you make it really strong it is to die for 🙂 After going to a job this morning I came down to little river and met Judy about noon.. there wasn’t really any wind so we hung out with Breck on Runnaway for a while then went to lunch with Breck, Patty and Hans. After lunch …. a long and late lunch… we went back to sea puppy and headed out… halfway to the inlet it started to drizzel on us but we were detirmined… on we went… after gettin to the inlet we stopped the motor and realized there was no wind at all… then a thunder storm rolled over and rained on us and gave a little wind but not much.. within a few minutes I decided to just go back in the inlet and anchor out for a while.. so we headed in and anchored up behind bird island. the thunderstorms had brought some much cooler air, to the point that we were getting cold.. I only had one foul weather jacket on board so judy got that.. I need to remember to keep more of them on board even in summer. Today kinda sucked.. it was still better than not going out but it still sucked 🙂 Angela, Mike, Miriam, Richard and I all went out on Sea Puppy. It looked pretty good as we left the dock but about halfway to the inlet the skys started to close in and a drizzle begin… then the rain lifted but we were still watching the skys closely.. with a low ceiling and lots of grey clouds it was a bit of a forbiding sky on three sides of us. Well by the time we got to the inlet it had rained on us twice briefly and was looking much worse. Also we started to hear thunder in the distance.. I had been hoping that it would clear up but it just didn’t look like it. I went ahead and called it and we headed back to the dock.. We were under sail at this point and the winds were favorable to sail back to the marina so we left the motor in the water but with it off. Well we went out and kicked butt on saturday. The boats in my class were a Hunter 23.5 with a phrf of 255, Kathey Lynn with a phrf of 171 and me in Sea Puppy at 191. We lost the second race due to a not great start and not balancing the weight on the boat correctly.. The wind had shifted about 45 degrees so it was a straight up speed race with us making the windward mark without tacking and then reaching back to the finish line. It was great, I finally got to take Sea Puppy out again. The roller furling is awesome.. total time to sails out or furled is under 15 seconds. The radio worked great also.. and the main goes up and down so easy it’s like being on another boat now. Amazing what having a sheeve at the top of the mast will do 🙂 I have stopped using a shackle on the main halyard. I am just using a bowline on it to attach to the headboard of the sail. Thats what we were using to attach to the shackle we were using and it had issues. So its just easier and more convienent to just put it on the main directly. |
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