Deconstructing the Race
We corrected to 4th on last week’s race and 4-1/5 minutes behind the guy ahead of us. We coulda’ been a contender. It was an interesting race.
We were behind the crowd after rounding the first mark. We flew double headsails towards the second and reached that mark with the rest of the crowd. We were port; they were starboard. But we were ahead enough of the other boats I thought the mark distance rules applied and we went around first. One boat called me on it. I wasn’t sure I’d done right. So when we were the starboard boat, I ‘kindly’ got out of everyone’s way and lost time.
Ah well!
Then everyone headed towards the channel and we kept to the more shallow water. They lost wind and the tide was against them, too, so we caught up again. Then the wind changed. Winds were taking us across the river, then switched and we were moving more southerly. The other boats made the correction for the mark better than we did and made up their time.
But it was exciting!
Not only that, the temperature was perfect and, except for that mess at the end, the winds were great, too.
Depth Problems
Last week was a beautiful sail. The fog never did roll in enough to make visibility questionable for the race course.
We did, however, have to deal with depth gauge issues and two large freighters being pushed and pulled by tugs. One freighter/tug passed us, and it was looking like we’d have time to cross over the channel before the second one was upon us. All of the sudden, the depth meter started showing it shallow underneath us. It went quickly from 30-something feet to 6-8′. The maps didn’t show any shoaling there, but we tacked, just to be safe. Then, of course, we had to wait for the other ship to go past before we crossed the channel.
Then there was the mark we were heading to: Godwin Thoroughfare. It’s shallow around it, and gets very shallow near shore. So when we were showing 6′ of water, we tacked to try for a closer approach. This time, we again showed it shallow, but we were closer to the mark, so we took it around, without any problem. Guess the earlier tack, in this case wasn’t warranted.
I talked with someone at work about our first problem. He said that when there was alot of turbulence from big ships, it could change the density of the water and play havoc with depth sounders. So my question to the more experienced on this list: is that true? Have you ever seen that?
On the second point, I did find that the depth near the shore around the Godwin Thoroughfare mark does get down to 3′ quite quickly. So I’m still glad we made the extra tack.
[Top]Foggy Mornings
I love sailing. I love the feel of the wind on your face, the silent moving through the water, being outdoors. In fact, there’s little that I don’t love about the whole experience.
I love the fact that I have an electric engine. It’s not completely silent. But it’s quiet enough that you can hear the music on the stereo, or keep up a conversation with the folks on the boat, or just enjoy the feeling of being on the water.
On foggy mornings, I don’t imagine sailing. I imagine heading out, with the electric motor going. The area so quiet it feels like you’re the only one around. Not being able to see the shore, but knowing there are others out there in the mist, on the water, looking out, wondering if there’s someone unseen on the water. Faintly hearing the motor, because sound seems to travel so much better in the fog.
Today was a day like that. I heard the weather report this morning: heavy fog until noon. I dropped by the marina, to put ice in the icebox so that the drinks would be cold this evening when we headed out for the race. The fog was out there, on the river, and I yearned to go out and meet it.
Sigh! I had to go to work, to afford my boat habit, and leave it behind for now.
[Top]Waiting
Five weeks ago, I asked the marina to pull the boat out for spring prep. It was early enough that I hoped to beat the rush of boats also wanting to get ready for a spring launch. I had purchased the boat 6 years ago and, according to what I’d read, the bottom should be stripped. So I asked the marina to do that. They told me that the bottom didn’t need to be stripped. Good news!
So I asked the marina to smooth the bottom and check for blisters. I have little upper body strength and I don’t like spending my time with a 30-lb vacuum sander over my head. I also figured, with the schedule I’ve had lately at work, it would be much faster to have the marina do the work.
That was 5 weeks ago.
We’ve had weather delays. The wife of the guy who was working on it had a baby.
And we had communication errors.
See, when I told them to smooth the bottom, I meant that I thought there were blisters to be taken care of, and the paint was pretty wavy because I’d just been slapping it on. But the head worker thought I meant that I wanted the paint sanded off, so he started to do that.
Now, I don’t know why he did that, especially after he told me that it didn’t need to be stripped. But that’s what he was doing. And that was taking so long, because the paint was on there hard, so they called in someone with – not a sandblaster – but a bead blaster? Anyway, same idea. They stripped the paint.
Well, that did open up any blisters. But it also meant that there would need to be a barrier coat put on. At first I told them I’d take care of that. But as the time went on, I again figured that it would be faster to have them take care of it. But I don’t know. They haven’t even gotten that far.
I stopped by tonight. They have about 2/3rds of the bottom prepped. Meaning that it’s had the filler put on and it’s been sanded smooth. They still have half the keel and all of the rudder to do.
The good news is, I won’t have to have this done for about 10 more years.
Will I have the boat for next week’s race? A week after racing season has started? I hope so!
Stripped boat bottom
Line Back
After last time’s unsuccessful attempt by a Sea Scout to get the jib halyard back on the mast, their Scoutmaster, Mike, offered to do it for me. So, the following weekend, we met and he donned the climbing harness that Liza had used the week before.
I had been concerned about being able to get Mike, or any full-grown adult up the mast, since I don’t have alot of upper body strength and I figured that alot of the physical part of overcoming gravity would need to be done by me and the winch trying to raise Mike on the main halyard. Mike assured me, however, that he could shimmy up the mast to help in the effort.
Well, it didn’t quite work that way. Apparently, my mast was too slick for him to climb. So, like with Liza, he climbed onto the boom so I could get enough slack to get the line through the catch block we had set up and onto the winch to turn it to lift him up.
Mike atop the mast
The job turned out to be much simpler than I thought it would be. Gotta love Newtonian physics in action! There was enough mechanical help from our setup that I had no trouble turning the winch and lifting him up. Mind you, it took alot of turns to get him up – it was a slow job. But it was fairly painless from my perspective.
Not so Mike. He got as far as the shrouds and asked me to stop. I assumed he was tired and needed a break. Luckily, the line was through a clutch, and on my self-tailing winch, so I didn’t have to hold it while he rested. It also made it easier on the climb up because I didn’t have to worry about losing ground.
Once Mike reached the top, it was a quick job to get the line in place. He had pulled the core out of the line and woven the ends back to make a loop that was narrower than the line itself. He then attached a string, and attached the straightened coat hanger to the string. The whole thing went in and he was ready to be lowered in no time.
Lowering Mike down, with that setup, was no problem either. I wrapped the line around a nearby cleat, to give me some leverage, lifted the clutch, pulled the line out of the self-tailer, and started lowering him. Again, it proved to be much easier than I expected.
When Mike got down, he said he’d gotten dizzy when he was up there, which surprised him. That had never happened before. He did take some time to lower his head and get back his equilibrium before pronouncing that this was the last mast he was likely to climb; he was going to leave it to the Sea Scouts from now on.
Mike, after his rest