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Monday, October 28, 2013

Solo sailing again

3rd time out in 3 weeks.  Single handing it today and though I have sailed this way the most, I have recently enjoyed the extra hands on board when I had them.  This boat is pretty easy to handle on my own but it's those things like dropping sail or raising them that is so much easier with somebody at the helm and somebody working the sails.


 Today I put seizing wire on the rigging turnbuckles.  I also brought a real anchor onboard today, with 15 feet of heavy chain and 100 feet of line for the rode.  So now there are 2 anchors on board.

The wind was up so after starting with full sail I decided to try sail with just the jib, since I don't have any reef points on the main sail.  This proved to be just fine.  An interesting thing about this boat is that the stern ends flush and in the water.  This creates quite a bit of "chuckle" from the wake, and I wonder about how this turbulence affects the speed of the boat.  As I understand it, this could be dragging or sucking down the stern of the boat in a way that a boat with a stern that is up out of the water would not.

It was a really nice sail and I shared a snack of muffins and an apple with the locals back at the slip.
My lunch mates today.
Excerpt from email to friend after my sail:
While I was sitting in the boat, after the sail I saw a guy meet up with a girl, walk down the dock to his 15 or 17 foot sloop that already had another girl on it, push it back out of the slip and then climb aboard and us his electric trolling motor auxiliary to slowly move out of the marina.  I really liked the boat, might have been a WWPotter, but it looked leaner, and I like the electric/cheap version of an auxiliary.  Also the guy gets points for, not only going out when everybody else was in, including me but I had just come back, but for having 2 girls on his boat as crew.  Stingy bastard!  Good on him.

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