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We slept like the dead through saturday night, even the sound of the band from the deck above the docks as they late into the night didn’t keep us awake. Lack of sleep from the friday nightgale and a long day racing saturday left us exhausted. While many partied late into the night after the race, most of us that had been there for friday night’s storm made an early night of it saturday. In contrast to friday night the water and wind saturday night was calm to the point of flat with the boat not moving at all through the night other than to rock to the wake of the rare vessal that passed by on the inland waterway just yards away.
Sunday morning dawned bright and clear with blue skies and a strong chill breeze. Though slow to get up and moving just about everyone was ready to leave and had cast off the docks by 9am. Orrin on La’ Bon Vie was towing Angela on Valkyr down the waterway and back to Little River. Pirate Girl (Patty) and Winds of Freedom (Ben) also took the waterway back to Little River.
I didn’t think we were going to get to race. The wind was blowing dead on our stern as we sat in our slip at a steady 25 kts with gusts into the low 30s. We had a pole dead behind us that we needed to slide sideways around (about 9 feet to starboard to clear it before we could then back out into the channel).
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With only a 4 hp outboard I wasn’t sure it was up to controlling us in a sideways slide and then backing against the wind and fetch that was coming at our stern. With all of us on the boat (Jay and Miriam and Me) we did a couple of test runs while still tied to the dock. Each time I was able to take the slack out of the docklines from where we were being pushed into the slip by the wind and waves. So with just a few minutes before our start in the race I made the decision to give it a try. We used a line from the port stern cleat to the piling behind us on starboard for some extra security, just in case we had a problem. However it all went very smooth.. With the poor engine going full out we slowly moved sideways around the pole behind us and then out into the channel. 🙂 I almost didn’t give it enough room before going into forward. With the wind pushing us back at the docks I thought for a moment that it was going to push us into them before I got turned away. The nice thing about my outboard is that I can turn it as well as the tiller and it gives me an increadably tight turning radius. I used it 🙂
It continually amazes me how maneuverable Sea Puppy is and how little power she needs to move. She realistically weighs in with us on board with fuel, water, batteries, engine etc.. at about 4000lbs. Her dry weight just the boat with no stores, fuel etc.. on her is around 3300 lbs. a whopping 900 more than the factory specks show. Every 235 owner I have heard of that has weighed their boat has reported similar weights. I would like to move up to a 6hp engine though just to have a little more margin in power.
You have to wonder about people that sail sometimes. I mean the forcast was for rain and 20 knots all day friday. Thirty to fifty knots gale force winds that night. Mid twenty knots saturday and twenties on Sunday.
So what do I and 5 other boats do Friday? head up the waterway from Little River Inlet to Cape Fear River via the Intracoastal Waterway friday morning. 3 of the boats had dogers and or bimini’s but a couple of us didn’t have anything but foul weather gear. The forcast was right.. It rained, it poured, it blew, and we motored on and on through it.
Went sailing on sea puppy with Cary Huhr and his girlfriend Michelle. Tested new single line reefing and it seems to work well.
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My engine is still not working so I went sailing with Patty on Pirate Girl. Winds were blowing 15 to 20 knots and seas were 3 feet or so… maybe 5 feet in the jetties as we went out.
We only put the main and jib out about half way and still were averaging 5.5 to 7 knots depending on the point of sail.
Pirate Girl is kinda like sailing a bigger version of Sea Puppy… Pirate Girl is a Beneteau 323 and Sea Puppy is a Beneteau First 235.
We didn’t stay out long only sailed for a couple hours. The tide was dropping and even with a 4 ft 9 inch draft pirate girl is having problems getting in and out of Mariners point and her slip there. We barely scraped in an hour an a half before low tide and had to pull the boat into the slip from the dock the last 15 feet or so, as she was dragging in the mud.
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Went sailing with Judy. Very nice day on the water.. Wind was about 15 knots from the N/NE coming off the coastline. It layed the waves down so that the water was flat near shore. Really nice sailing. Breck in Runnaway just scooted by us.. even though he is much heavier the longer waterline paid off today.
Made the mistake of not re-leasing the boom vang after practicing putting a reef in. I shook out the reef and then tightened up on the main halyard to put the sail all the way back up. It got stiff and I heard a spang!!! sound.. lol don’t ask me to tell you what spang!! sounds like :). Long story short It bent the stainless fitting on the mast base that it attaches to and turned loose. I fixed it the next morning.
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I took Mirriam, Emily and William out on Sea Puppy today. It was an interesting day in more ways than one. We made a convert to sailing and I learned some lessons I should have already known.
William had a very bad first experience with sailing (very bad case of moition sickness) and has been very forcefull in his resistance to going out sailing since.
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Talk about your epic tantrums. Anyway Mirriam is working hard to help him overcome this fear before it becomes a long term problem. I knew he was going to be a handfull when I agreed to let him go sailing with us. There isn’t much on earth as loud as a young child who is scared of something and doesn’t want to go. To be honest for a little bit I started to want to just crawl inside myself and turn the noise off 🙂 He has a pair of lungs and an impressive streak of stubborn in using them.
Went with Judy to the sherman and back… about 7 hours altogether… actually we went down the coast for a while before working our way out to the sherman and then back..
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short and sweet for now.. 🙂 3rd place in first race.. 1st place in second race.. it was close in the first race and we were way ahead on second race.. 🙂 everyone did a stellar job of it.
We bent the spinnaker pole around the babystay. I forgot that the babystay was on and the foredeck guy 🙂 didn’t notice either so when we put it on the first time it was on the wrong side.. when we pulled in on the guy to pull the pole back it bent around the baby stay… 🙁 now I need a new section of tubing to put the fittings back on.
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Waking up to the lapping of water on the hull before sunrise is an unbeatable combination. I sleepily got up and started hot water to boiling for tea and hot chocolate and then took my camera up on deck and took some pictures of the sunrise…. truly gorgeous..
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After sitting in the cockpit and watching the sun come up while sipping on a cup of hot chocolate we got moving and put the jib and mainsail on the roller furler and boom respectively.
Well I intended to go sailing saturday but one thing after another ate up the whole day as I made my way to the boat. We finally got out of the marina about 5 pm and I realized that the battery was dead. We were planning on anchoring out for the night so this was a bit serious… no anchor light no depth gauges no lights inside or running lights.. So we turned right around and redocked. I drug out the charger but when I started to charge the battery the charger kept giving a F01 error and wouldn’t charge it.
Well we took Sea Puppy out racing today.. I thought I was going to be the race committe today but Chapel and her husband were in town and volunteered to do it. 🙂 so I got to race Sea Puppy.
I was supposed to have lots of crew and most of them ended up not showing up. Miriam was the only one left with me when we left the dock and because of her surgery she couldn’t help sail… It was looking more like a casual solo race for me than anything really competitive. Once we got out there though we took aboard Richard off the committe boat. He had helped Chapel and husband as well as her niece and friend get the committe boat out and the course set prior to the race. Chapels niece and friend were starting to get sea sick on the committe boat which was anchored so I took them onboard also ( the perked up after getting moving again.)
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