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I finally started a project that has been on my mind since before I even bought Sea Puppy. Moving the battery from starboard to port. The original design (actually the only design from the factory) for the Beneteau F235s has the engine, gas tank, Cockpit locker, holding tank, head, chart table and battery all on starboard.. This gives a normally laden F235 a pronounced list to starboard. When sailing on starboard tack this is like having another crew person hiked out but on port its just the opposite.. This creates a significant difference in speed between port and starboard tacks as well as a little bit of pointing difference.
Sea Puppy is still a mess inside from the work I have been doing to the electrical system so instead of racing her I went out on Webejamming with Jim Pike, Lou, Greg and Cary. It was an interesting day.. Webejammings engine is still not running so Jim got his son to bring a skiff out and tow us from the dock the 5 miles to the inlet 🙂 and back later in the day.. sort of. 🙂
The first race was going good till we got to the first mark.. Jim thought we were doing a windward leeward race instead of a triangle course… everyone else in the fleet must have been wondering what we were doing heading back for the finish line after the first mark 🙂 it took a couple minutes to sort that out and get back on course 🙂 over all I think we did 3rd in that race… but I haven’t seen any of the official times yet.
Breck brought his bass boat out
19175
and we motored over to my slip in cokina harbor from the public landing over by Poo’s. We then rigged a harness for the float(the one me and steve went and got the other evening) and got it out from where it was tied floating behind Sea Puppy and took it in tow with breck’s boat. It only took about 20 minutes to take it to the public landing and floated it onto my trailer.. 🙂 actaully a fairly easy job… though we somehow got it crosswise on the trailor the first time and it lodged above the bunkerboards instead of between them… very weird… we just backed the trailor back into the water and refloated it and tried again..again there a couple of pictres of it on the trailor after we got it out of the water but I haven’t uploaded them to the web yet.
Sunday we went back out on Pirate Girl. After again sailing through the morning to early afternoon we went and anchored out at Bird Island. Steve and I took the surf kayaks out on the ocean side and surfed for a while 🙂 what a blast.. I had almost forgotten what fun it is.. lol or how out of shape I am.
Hans who was out on Runaway and over at bird Island also told me that one of the torpedo looking floats/tanks/? had been seen on the marsh on the waterway… I talked steve into going back to my boat after we got back to the marina to go out and salvage it.. 🙂 we took and motored down just past Crab Catchers on the Inland Waterway and anchored in about 4 ft of water and then waded through mud up to our knees to get to the bank.. the float was up in the marsh grass about 50 or 60 feet from the waterway but it was light enough that Steve and I could slowly/barely roll it over the marsh grass and into the water where it foated. I wish I had pictures of us doing it … what a hoot.
we went out saturday on Pirate Girl and sailed till about 2 in the afternoon and then rafted up beside Runaway, Breck’s Boat. Later Angela in Sea Haven rafted up on us and Al and his wife on Achiles Heel anchored near us.
I got to ride Brecks Jet Ski… oh my.. i have had fun bashing those things for years but MY are they fun to ride 🙂 I didn’t realize what fuel hogs they are though… it ate 13 + gallons of gas .. ouch!!!!
Later in the afternoon we had a bit of excitement when the bow line on Sea Haven parted and the current turned her stern to Pirate Girl’s port side with the engine and boarding ladder of Sea Haven bouncing off of the hull. Everyone was sitting on the beach except one person who was asleep on Pirate Girl and slept till we all started swarming up on the boats… I’m not sure who noticed first what had happened but as soon as I saw it I with steve sprinted down the beach and out into the water … the last 50 feet to the boats was in water we had to swim in and the current was running about 2.5 to 3 knots.. I could barely make headway at a swiming sprint… If it had been 15 to 20 feet farther I’m not sure I would have made the back of pirate girl. About 4 minutes later others from on the beach started to arrive to help me and steve. The lines were so tight that we had an increadably hard time releasing them. we tried pulling Sea Haven back against the current to sit beside Pirate Girl but pulling several thousand lbs of 27 ft boat against the current wasn’t happening.. finally with Steve and Angela on Sea Haven we released her and let her drift off. Crises resolved they got her running and swung back around.. We passed angela her stuff and she went on back to the marina while steve hopped over onto runnaway. On inspecting Pirate Girl we found no damage just some smudges on her gel coat. I haven’t had a chance to talk to angela and see if she had any damage.
I just ran into this problem. I am the first owner of the boat ever to use the holding tank… So tank is half full and I’m getting ready for the NC/SC Govenors cup regatta and think.. ah I will pump out that 100 lbs of weight on starboard.. It not only laughed at me but fell out rolling on the floor… and to this day still wont open..It is siezed shut permanently.. We only stopped trying to get it open when it started to look as if the boat was going to take damage. An easy temp solution is to undo the hose leading to the fitting from underneath and just pull it out of the hatch and pump out directly from it. or if your real brave open main inspection port in the tank and go for shock value… I will be getting new fitting soon and replacing old one.
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I went to a friends wedding yesterday and missed the first day of racing… Jim and Patty and John took Sea Puppy out and raced her.. however racing against a J24, Tze Szu, a Beneteau F36.7 and a tartan 10 didn’t do much for our chances.. Sea Puppy finished 6 of 8 if .. today with me on board we finished again 6th of 8… I think we should have been in cruising class not racing class.. we were the highest phrf in racing with Bens Anago being close to us. All the other boats were significantly lower than us.
It ended up being just me and patty taking her 323 out monday. It was a beautifull day sailing with 6 to 12 knot winds and 2 to 3 ft seas. Sunny with clear but hazy skies. We were actually able to arrange it so that we left on a falling tide and got back on the rising tide.. this actually turned into a problem getting back into the slip at the end of the day. both the wind and the current were coming into the marina and pushing the bow of the boat over as patty tried to back into her slip.. after about 10 tries we finaly got the boat in. It wasn’t fun for patty but she did a good job of it.
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Our dog Daisy disapeared thursday evening. (The electric radio fence that normally keeps her in died.. the best we can tell is lightening got it.. it looked as if someone put gun poweder in it and set it off. it blew the cover off and parts everywhere and charred the inside.) She is never gone long when she escapes the yard and she was all night. I spent several hours driving around the roads near here looking and calling for her. It left me with a real hollow feeling wondering what happened to her. Needless to say I didn’t sleep good. I kept getting up through the night and going to the porch and calling for her.
Day two at the Leukemia Cup was another day of tack tack tack. We again raced inside on the river and with a vicious current running against us on the windward tack we were limited to one side of the river. So it was short quick tacks again and again and again. Probably every 3 or 4 minutes we would tack. For some reason we just couldn’t seem to point as well or go as fast as we thought we should be. It wasn’t a great day for standings in the race but it was some fun if tireing sailing.
I slept on the boat saturday night… I went to sleep about 11pm and was told the next morning that there was a bad thunderstorm and rain about 1:30 in the morning… I wouldn’t know though 🙂 I slept like a baby the whole night.
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Here is a quick link to some pictures I took today on the second day of the race.. I will come back and fill in when I’m rested up a little 🙂
http://scottcarle.com/gallery/v/Sailingandboats/racing/album/
scott
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It was a fun race. We took 2nd place behind Tze Su? sp 2 hours 42 minutes and 40 seconds
We held with tze su upwind runing about a 10th of a knot slower than her the entire leg. Down wind runing the spinnaker though she tacked down wind and we went straight for the mark. With our symetrical spinnaker I thought we had it made about half way to the mark and that we were going to beat her. We were doing a sold 6.5 to 7.2 knots all the way downwind. Tze Su was a dot on the horizon off behind and to starboard of us.. about 2 miles from the mark she started to gain quickly and within the last mile passed us to take the finish line 4 minutes ahead of us. I talked to Patrick later and he said they were doing 9.5 knots reaching with their asymetrical spinnaker. I felt really good about coming in 4 minutes behind Tze Su…. They are based off the 235 hull but he extended the transom 3 ft so that their waterline is 3 ft more than mine. I have a wing keel and draw 2’9″ while he has a fin keel with a bulb and draws 5 ft, my mast is 29 ft tall and his is 33 ft he also has a bow sprit to run an oversized spinnaker on. Also I believe that his boat is lighter by a fair bit than mine. It certainly seems to sit lighter in the water from what I have observed. In any case it is always a boat to be feared in a race. it is fast and well captained
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