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Well we have only gotten to go out a couple more times on sea puppy. I had the boat pretty well torn apart for a week or two with repairs and upgrades since the last set.
The last time I took sea puppy out was to single hand for the first time.. The sailing went well 🙂 10 to 15 knots wind and 3 to 4 ft seas and she handled great.. I cross sheeted the jib sheets accross the cockpit so I could adjust them from the high side and it worked very well. With this setup I can handle the tiller, mainsheet, traveler and jib sheets while sitting in one place. For raising and lowering sails though I still want a tiller pilot. It is tricky if you have to reach a hand for the tiller every once in a while to stay into the wind while rasing sails.. To many hands are needed.
Well it has been an intersting couple weeks.. I just bought Sea Puppy a Beneteau First 235 in the end of december. I helped Patty buy her last march and have sailed and worked on her since then with Patty. Patty is now moving up to a 323 and I was able to swing buying Sea Puppy.
Here is a picture coming into Little River Inlet at sunset from Sea Puppy.
Our first sail with me as new skipper was January 1st for the Hangover Regatta… what a blast … flat ocean and about 6 knots of wind. temperature in the mid 60’s.. we were racing a 30 footer and two other boats 36ft and longer. we kicked ass 🙂 Sea Puppy is a fast boat and handles beautifully. the 30 footer Anago would catch upto us on the downwind legs as they were running a spinnaker, but we would pull ahead on the windward legs.. at the end of the race we crossed the finish line just seconds ahead of them… The other two boats decided to go party before the end of the race as we and anago had forged so far ahead of them.
I forgot to mention what I had used as an anchor light. I bought a battery powered light/lantern at Wall Mart for about $2.50 that runs on 4 AA batteries. However I found that the life span of the batteries is only about 4 hours maybe a little less. It is bright and 360 degress though. I did a little research and found that you can buy a LED replacement bulb that replaces the normal bulb and gets much better power consumption according to several websites that sell them. Prices ranged from 12 dollars to about the mid 20’s for them.
It was the best of times and the worst of times 🙂 lol now that I have the plagerism out of the way I will just call it an interesting time.
Patty and I took the boat out Saturday night at Murrels Inlet, SC. and came back Sunday afternoon. Technically we did this, but not quite according to the plan. The plan was to be on the water about 4 or 5 saturday afternoon and take our time finding a place on the marsh behind Murrels Inlet to anchor for the night. Watch the sunset and just generally kick back. Well life being what it is we didn’t get to my house to pick the boat up till 5pm, 45 minutes of prep-time later we are on the road.
Comes around, Goes around has been sitting in a slip for the last couple weeks because I needed to work on the trailer. It seemed like a good excuse to sail more 🙂 no set up or take down at end of the day, just throw off the lines and head out.
I was really wanting to get out for a while so me and Patty took the boat out friday evening and motored down the inland waterway to Bird Island and anchored out. 🙂 I hung a small coleman lantern from the rigging for a anchor light ( note this doesn’t work very well as it tends to go out after a few hours. It works good for light while your up though.) A two burner propane stove in the back of the cockpit works great 🙂 hot tea and chocolate on demand 🙂
Sailed Comes Around Goes Around in the Sailboat parade.. we sailed south down the coast and then back up for a downwind upwind course.. did quite well downwing and then lost ground to the bigger boats upwind as the breeze stiffened. still was maybe 6th out of 11 boats finishing.
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