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So this morning after sleeping on Sea Puppy last night I went to breakfast with Hans, Breck and Angela. We spent the requisite one and a half hours over breakfast 🙂 and then Hans and I went and helped Breck run a couple of lines through new blocks he put just over the spreaders on his mast. Hans went up the mast in the bosuns chair to feed the lines through… Hans being Hans couldn’t not ham it up so here are the pictures to prove it 🙂 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. 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. I got up early and started tightening up and tuning the upper and lower shrouds.. There is no adjustment on the roller furling unit. It is a fixed length. I set the uppers and lowers at the same poundage that I had her tuned to with the stock forstay and found that I was pulling the mast into a curve forward at the top of the mast.. This is a very bad thing. I also had massive aft rake compared to the just a very lot of rake sea puppy usually has. I spent most of the morning messing with it with no good results. Miriam showed up late in the afternoon while I was working on it and gave a hand also. Finally I started manufacturing new connecting plates for attaching the roller furling unit to the chain plate at the bow. A good drill for the holes and a roto zip with a metal cutting blade did a good job of creating the new plates.. lol at least they did after I got my measurements right. here is a picture of the installed furler with the new plates we made showing. Early in the morning I went and cleaned up the roller furling unit and scrubbed the bird shit and pine sap off it from it being stored in pattys back yard for the last year and a half. Soapy water and a kitchen pad was good for the bird poop but it needed a stainless scraper to get the pine sap off. It looked much better for being scrubbed. I also went up and down the length cleaning out the to luff slots on the foil and ran water at pressure through the length of the furler to wash as much grit and dust out as I could. I then attached the furler and neatened up all halyards, lines and shrouds so it would be ready to carry to the boat and mount. I also sprayed the length of the slots with mclube sail kote. After going out on Pirate Girl racing with Miriam and Patty, I met Mike back at the marina to install the coax for the Vhf Antenna. I had met Mike the previous weekend sailing on Pirate Girl.. He is an Extra Class Ham Radio Operator that also teaches classes for ham radio in the local areas. I had gotten into a conversation with him about radios and such and mentioned that I was installing at vhf antenna on my mast and he volunteered to give me a hand with soldering the PL259 ends on and pulling the cable. 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 spent a lot of time on friday working on the mast with Miriam helping me. I have to give her credit for being willing to spend a day out in the grueling sun workin on my mast with me.. It would have taken much longer with out her help. I put new sheeves in the base of the mast and a new main halyard sheeve in the masthead. The jib halyard, topping lift and spinnaker halyard sheeves looked to be in very good condition so I left them in. |
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