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Again I was supposed to have a full boat.. I had invited some friends out and they called saturday evening and canceled. Then I invited my neighboor and his wife that have the slip next to me to go out and they said yes but canceled at the last minute. I ended going out with Mark a newer member of the club that was at breakfast.
We put sails up just outside the intrance to the marina and sailed the five miles down the waterway to the inlet and onto the ocean. Winds on the ocean were running 15 to 18 through early afternoon and then picked up to 20 to 22 mid afternoon when we were headed back in. Once out on the ocean we headed torward southport and ran about 6 or 7 miles up the coastline and then back.
With the new head sail arrangement I didn’t feel as if Sea Puppy were overpowering and wanting to head up quite as soon as she used to. Mabye the slight change in rake is responcible for that or maybe the fact that I put a lot of bend in the mast with the backstay adjuster when the wind started to really kick, as well as pulling in on the cunningham and flattening reef to flatten out the main. I would say the wind was 18 to 20 when we finally put a reef in the main and running a little more than 20 when we pulled the jib into 100% down from 150%. We didn’t reef the jib because we felt we needed to but simply because I had not tried sailing her with the roller furling reefed before and wanted to see how the sail set. I was very impressed. The luff of the sail has the foam strips sewn on to help with furled sail shape as well as the furler being designed to take one whole wrap in the middle of the sail before it starts pulling in on the foot. Between the two I had a very decent sail shape when brought down to 100%.
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…
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 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..
This is a preview of 2006 August 11th anchoring out for the night at waities island . Read the full post (1244 words, 0 images, estimated 4:59 mins reading time)
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.
The first race we had what I think was a bad start. However everyone else in our class must have made some mistakes during the race also as we ended up with a very solid win. The course was a standard triangle with a 1 mile leg to the windward mark from the start.
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.
With the forcast and the big thunder storm clouds in the sky to the west I decided not to take Sea Puppy out today…. It ended up that I could have as the conditions stayed fairly mild but I was wanting to take it easy on her first time out with all the changes that have been made so ended up saying not today..
Well with that Breck down the dock on Runaway invited me to go out with them. It was nice. His boat is a much bigger sailboat.. a Cabo Rico 38 .. weighing in at about 22 thousand lbs.. Its a nice boat to kick back on the foredeck and just enjoy the ride 🙂 Which I did. We didn’t sail.. just motored down the waterway to waities Island then played a bit there with Breck’s jet ski.. lol after Sarah and Hans saved it from sinking… Han’s didn’t know about the drain plugs and when he put it in the water the were open. the only thing keeping the jet ski from sinking was the internal bouncy. We all had to help carry the jet ski up the beach so we could get the drain holes out of the water and let it drain out.
Sea Puppy still has her mast down so I went out with Patty on Pirate Girl her Beneteau 323. I was a fairly stiff day with winds between 18 to 22 knots and seas running between 4 and 6 feet. We reefed both the main and the jib to about 1/2 to 2/3 normal sail area and pirate girl just flew. It was just Patty, Mirriam and Me on the boat so we were all kept busy with tacking around the course but it was definately easier than WeBeJamming which is about the same size but lacks the self tailing winches and furling main and jib.
I went out with Orin and Richard today on Orin’s boat La Bon Vie’ a Beneteau Oceanus 39. What a nice boat.. It is smooth as silk.. He has a roller furling jib and in mast furling on the main which made putting sail on and taking it in very easy.
When we first got out on the ocean there was barely any wind… we just sat there and bobbed for a while. Eventually we thought we saw some wind farther out and put the engine back on to go check it out. Still no wind.. Some of the other sailboats out there started motoring back in about then…. wrong choice. About 30 minutes later the wind started to pick up and we spent the rest of the day sailing at 5 to 7 knots in 11 or 12 knots of wind..
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