Winter Sailing?

Well it’s mid December so it should be winter.. but with average temps in the 70’s it has been feeling like very nice spring/fall weather. I just couldn’t resist the invitation to go sailing on Valkyr. Not a lot of wind today but enough for a steady 3.5 to 4.5 knots of boat speed. The ocean was almost flat with just a few ripples from a stronger gust or two. We just set the sails and balanced her out and didn’t really even have to touch the helm for long periods of time.  We lazed around on deck with the warm sun on our faces. The perfect day with just a bare hint of cool in the air with enough sun to warm us while we watched the dolphins jump out of the ocean under a clear blue sky.

Lee Kaufman was out on his boat also. Later on our way back to the marina we gave him a hand. The tide was extremely low and he ran aground in an area that normally he should not have had a problem with back in the inland waterway. We were coming in behind him and he gave us a call on the radio and wanted to know if we could pull him off. After taking a look at the situation Angela wanted to pull him over by his main halyard and heel his boat over sideways till the keel floated off and he could motor to deeper water. I was on the helm of  Valkyr and made a practice run up on Lee just to see how the boat would handle in the current and make sure I could manuver safely to pull him over and keep from grounding ourselves. Lee draws 3 feet while Valkyr draws more than 5.5 feet. Angela rigged up a line to pass to Lee from the bow of Valkyr with a dlink on the end of it that Lee could just click onto the shackle on his main halyard. I came in at an angle, bow first, slowly, letting the current move me down on to Lee’s boat. Angela got the line over to Lee and he got it on the halyard and I slowly backed down on the line till most of the slack was out of it. Lee during this time was back at his motor ready to gun it and motor out as soon as the keel came off the ground. Everyone was now ready, I slowly backed down on the line and heeled Lee’s boat over. Just like clockwork his keel came off the ground and he gunned the motor and slid out of the shallows back into the channel. At the same time I put Valkyr in forward and let the line slacken so that lee could get to the shackle to release our line. 🙂 only one more tense moment where Lee came close to bumping us as both we and him tried to quickly get back out in the main channel before the current took us back into the shallows and near by docks.

I felt real happy with my handling of Valkyr. I don’t have a lot of experience maneuvering bigger boats such as valkyr with a single prop and full keel so it felt good to acquit myself well.

After my success with the helping Lee I asked Angela If I could bring Valkyr back into her slip and Angela more than bravely said yes. 🙂 It was a good day and time for me to try it. Almost no wind at all by now and the tide was right at slack tide. So no current or wind affecting the boat coming into the slip. However all my nerves about doing this for the first time on a 20+thousand lb boat were wasted. Again the tide was so low that 4 ft before even getting to the slip the keel was touching the mud and getting into the slip was more a matter of driving through mud than a real docking. But I did it !!! 🙂