So . . . How Was Your Sail Today ?

[Weyalan]

We took Insatiable out for a 2 day cruise over the weekend. The weather was spectacular: 30+ Centigrade (85+ Fahrenheit), the water was warm enough to swim without a wetsuit (20 C / 68 F). My brother and his wife were over visiting from scotland, so it was something quite different for them, but they enjoyed themselves too (I don't think swimming in the sea is often an option in Scotland!)

We out a spinnaker up for the first time; our smallest one, but even so, in about 12 knots of breeze were doing a comfortable 7-8 knots... lovely! We anchored of the ominously named Snake Island, where I jumped in the water and grabbed 7 or 8 good size abalone, which we pan-fried for luch. During the weekend we also caught a good feed of fish (flathead) and a big bag of mussels. We caught a couple of shark too, but released them.

All in all it was a fantastic weekend. The only downside was that our marina had asked us to use a different pen (to accommodate some other boats that were coming down for a racing regatta). The new pen was rather narrow and the breeze was quite strong across the pen, so I got blown onto the leeward pile coming in and put a scratch in the paintwork . But that is no big deal and the weekend was such a good one that even this small mishap couldn't take the smile off my dial.

[SkiprJohn]

Aloha Weyalan,
Your sail sounds more fun than mine. I'll try a bigger more interesting story next time.
LOL.
JohnL

[Weyalan]

Another fine weekend of sailing:
Took the boat away on Saturday and sailed south in a nice 12-15knot northerly. Found a quiet bay, caught a decent feed of fish. Came home Sunday in a nice 10-15 knot Westerly. A few dolphins came and swan abound the boat during the trip home.

[Steve Rust]

Not so good!

[SkiprJohn]

Drove down to Hilo Bay about 9:30AM. Beautiful sunny day with winds from the East at 10-12 when we started out in the club Folkboat. Once we were outside the breakwater it was 12-15 with whitecaps everywhere. We caught sight of Island Girl and started sailing toward her. We're a mono and she's a tri so no chance of catching her but we could almost intercept her course. She has a yellow hull with a Hawaiian design on her amas and kelly green sails. Hard to miss her. Then we started seeing the whales breeching. Looked like a couple of juveniles having a play day. Splash after splash for about 20 minutes. Beautiful sight. This is humpback season. The wind started to build to 20 gusts so we turned around and headed back into the bay. The swells stopped but the whitecaps and wind were as strong as outside the bay. About 20 for the most part. We didn't tuck in a reef but should have so we were sailing on our ear until we dropped the main and sailed with jib only for a time. The folkboat will go to weather with jib only but slowly so we made it to the mooring under jib only and picked it up in the lee of an ironwood shore with winds to about 8. Back in at 3PM for a late lunch after the sail cover was back over the main and jib was stowed below.
Beautiful day, beautiful sail. Wonderful boat.
JohnL

[SkiprJohn]

Aloha Steve,
What's all that white stuff on top your boat?
JohnL

[Steve Rust]

SkiprJohn
Don't you recognize white sand when you see it. It is just like Whitehaven Beach in Austrailia. Just compare the two pictures.

[SkiprJohn]

Thanks for the nice photo Steve. That sand doesn't look all fluffy though.
Speaking of white sand beaches, the whitest beaches I've ever seen were on the panhandle of Florida near Pensacola. They really did look like snow.
Here we have black sand, green sand and gray sand.
JohnL

[SkiprJohn]

Well, really it was Sunday that I went sailing but have been super busy with a Doc appt in Honolulu (36 min. flight from here) yesterday and too tired to message after the sail on Sunday. Enough Excuses.

Sunday's sail was grand. First I towed the club's West Wight Potter 19 down to the launch ramp and made certain our club members were able to get her mast stepped and off sailing. It was only raining lightly. My next plan was to drive over to our new club site and set off in a dinghy and sail our club's International Folkboat. A couple of clubmembers wanted to get some more instruction on sailing and they wanted to take out our newly acquired Wharram 23 catamaran Wei Ji so off we went to explore our "new" '79 built Wharram.
There was about 8-10 knots of wind between bouts of complete calm. Sometimes really sunny and one really hard downpour. Since I've instructed on monohulls all my sailing days this was my first time teaching on a cat. My students were very new so would not have noticed any real mistakes but I don't think I made too many.
When tacking our cat she comes to a complete standstill when coming up into the wind so each tack we had to keep the jib backwinded to swing the bow around. We didn't miss a tack so we've got that one mastered. Wei Ji is quick to accelerate when we get a breeze but she is a bit on the heavy side compared with large Hobies or other cats so not as quick as those lighter boats. We were comparing ourselves to our West Wight 19 and our Reinell 26 and a Venture 21 as far as our pointing ability and speed were concerned so definitely the cat is much faster but will not point quite as high and stops when tacking and must accelerate again at each tack. In a very light breeze there were Sunfish passing us and that's because of our weight.
Truly we had a wonderful day and all of us learned something about the Wharram 23 Wei Ji in the 4 hours we were out on her.
JohnL

Still working on the big boat, but time for a break. This time of year we start out with dead calm in the morning, then at 12:00 every day, the wind starts up. It blows until 11:00 PM at 20-30kts every day. If you catch it just right, you get a good sail for a couple hours before it gets really ugly. Yesterday, I took the Wind Rider out at about 11. Had a nice sail about 5 or six miles up the coast. Had some good wind coming back, and 5-6' swells with a few white caps. Wet ride, but it was a rush.

[SkiprJohn]

Had a great sail today in 12-15k winds. Used full main and genoa on the Club International Folkboat. Sunny with big fluffy clouds. Winds were almost constant from ENE so were almost our regular tradewinds. They did switch around to nearl directly E for about an hour. Grand sail with lots of club members aboard.
Hope you had a good sail CapnCusp. Enjoyed your company.
JohnL

[markpj23]

Winds finally moderated last Thursday, and the work list was caught up for this trip. Underway early Friday morning for some sailing practice on CC Bay - and the granddaughter's first day of sailing.

Unfortunately, the Mustang Island / Piper Channel has silted in at the construction site of the new jetties. The work boats have either aggravated the silting problem OR the (nearly completed) jetty design is fatally flawed and will make the problem worse rather than better....

End result for us was another embarassing call to Tow Boat US to get us off the sand - IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CHANNEL. Glad I renewed that unlimited towing membership....

The big sportfish berthed next to us went out about 2 hours before us - at a lower tide. They also hit at the same spot and he draws 4.5ft as opposed to my 6ft. Work crews told me that they had already pulled 2 other boats off that morning! Tow Boat guys are lovin' life now as they get 3 calls per week (average) so they say.

Kinda sux when you can't get out of your marina until the construction project & dredging work is complete... in August. And I even checked with them before we left - they said "you should be fine...."

[Charlie]

Just returned from the PNW. Rained cleared up rained cleared up and all the time next to no wind. Got a good test on the new engine. Runs like a champ. Generator works well too. Whats that saying, "cruising is fixing things in exotic places." Especially applies when you have a long list of things to fix and a long distance (900 miles) from your boat. Installed the GPS, mounted the bow netting, installed the new VHF, traced down electrical problems in the AC circuits, spent most days working on one project or another while the kids were doing there school work in the morning. The afternoons we explored. Friday Harbor Washington is a magical place. Kids caught 30 shrimp, there is an excellent Whale Museum, people are friendly, nice place to rent bikes and have a cruise around the island. There is also a blind fat seal named Popeye that people say it is legal to feed. (i'm sure it itsn't legal but nobody says anything) He applaudes when he is fed and in general is a character. Roche Harbor was another great spot. Got the Kayaks out and cruised around.

Because a mouse ate a hole in our dink the emotional weather forecast from the admiral predicted bumpy seas if we should anchor out so we stayed at docks every night. I prefer to anchor out but the admiral's forecast is always right. Even if I sometimes don't interpert it correctly.

From Roche Harbor to Bedwell Harbor in Canada we got our only sailing in about an hour watching the Dahl's porpoises swimming near by. Met two other Sceptre 41's. It was nice to see all the different layouts and systems that they have but the kids said it all, "I thought we had a nice boat till I saw their's." And I struggling just to keep up with must do items.

Poet's Corner was a treat. Heated swimming pool -- hot tub -- tennis courts -- volleyball courts -- tide pooling.

It all ended too soon. Back to work.

[SkiprJohn]

Aloha All,
When I log in a sail here on this thread I always seem to forget to mention that the temperature is almost alsways 81F unless its rainy which makes it about 73F. I kind of assume that everyone goes sailing in t-shirt and shorts unless they are offshore.
JohnL

[Ex-Calif]

This weekend the club organized a joint trip to Malaysia for first time cruisers. We learned how to do a passenger manifest as the boat "captain", clear port customs as an international vessel and so on. No kidding - I was officially listed as the Captain! Everyone else was a passenger. Dang I felt like Royal Carribean! The immigration guy actually came to our sailing club and stamped everyone's passports right there. Well - I presented all the passports - My passengers didn't even have to show up - They must have been on the pool deck having welcome cocktails - LOL. Everything was in triplicate and each copy of the 2 page document ("crew" and "passengers" are on different manifests) had 3 different stamps and I had to sign each page three times except the passenger manifest which I had to sign an additional 6 times next to each passsengers name. Quite interesting the paper trail even little boats are supposed to leave in their wake. He did 6 boats in a row.



Then, after a little bit of drama and last minute panicking we had our twelve tons of gear on board for "A 3 hour Cruise, a 3 hour cruise..."



We sailed off to Malaysia and after Friday's failed cooling pump impeller, 3 hours before our renaming ceremony, we hoped for an uneventful trip. There was a decent breeze up so we hauled up the sails 5 minutes out of Changi. I reach down and haul on mainsheet and the pulley block "shatters" completely! So we fired up the motor and motor sailed along with Genoa only while John robbed a pulley block from the boom vang and did a replacment while we were underway. We are getting pretty good at patching this boat back together out of spare bits of string, bailing wire and electrical tape!



By the time we get to Malaysia - about 1 1/2 hours John has it all fixed up. We cleared customs and immigration (again I played captain and went to a special captain's room with all the passports) and motor sailed up the river as the wind was quite light. This was a great part of the trip. We had sails up helping a little, the autopilot was steering, the ipod was jamming through the Altec Lansing speakers and Otto was driving.


After a couple more hours of "Apocalypse Now" cruising up the river we arrive at a floating fish farm. We drop anchor and get our brand new 55 meter rode wet for the first time! The anchor digs in and the GPS says we are stopped - Yay! BTW - motor sailing we get 4.5 knots.



We had a big dinner and party last night with all the folks from the other 5 boats.



Sunday at 10 AM we headed back and had a great wind. It was only me and the admiral on the boat. Our team had split up for different reasons - none bad but most people wanted to go ashore and have brekkie and the admiral and I wanted to get going. Anyway the admiral and I sailed along with no motor and got 5.5 knots coming back. It was great and Otto was a big help sailing short handed.



The big boat caught up with us at the Malaysia immigration stop and we once again mixed up the manifests. John and I ended up on Relax Lah! alone and everyone else went on Ray's boat. Ray has a 51 foot boat he built himself ni 1981 and he and Helen have lived on it since then. Going away for the weekend for them just means dropping the bouy and taking their house with them.



Anyway coming back on the last leg we were chased down by a big thunderstorm. We were getting about 5.5 knots running directly away from the rain and lightning. It was great. The rain finally caught us and we got wet but it was nice to be cooled down. It was the first time I had sailed in adverse weather and it's a good skill to learn. I told John we also need to wash our sails anyway - Ha ha.



About 30 minutes out of Malaysia we had to turn to a reach. With the storm coming down and lightning flashing within a mile or two of us we were flying. We got 7.8 kts! We were crashing waves and big spray was washing up on the bow. She must have a great bow shape as not one spray reached the cockpit but it washed the foredeck real well where the mud from the anchor had made a mess - glad I didn't waste time cleaning it ;-) We almost buried the rail and several times John and I said we hoped the recent repair on the starboard stay was a good one. We feel pretty good about it as it was a good stress test for the repair and a great confidence builder.



Ray has a 51 foot boat with a 48 hp motor - he motor sailed with only the jib up all the way back. He trundles along at 5.5 - 6.5 knots. Out of Malaysia they had gotten about 3/4 of a mile ahead of us. We chased them down on the reach, passed them and then beat them back to the club - Whoo Hoo. Cleared immigration - a formality - and we were back. Of course unloading the boat in a thunderstorm wasn't a lot of fun but what the heck.



Needless to say John and I are ecstatic about the sail. It is really weird but a lot of things have had to be fixed in the last 3 weeks and things were breaking right up until "after" we left Changi yesterday But after we get away from the club the boat is rock solid. It was only 25 nautical miles up the river but it really feels like we went somewhere. Nothing failed, everything worked and it was good!



Two weks from now we are headed to Sebana Cove - It should be a fun trip. We will stay in a hotel room and play tennis and act hoi faloi and tell people our "yacht" is in the Marina - LOL.



Anyway thanks for listening. Turning 46 on Sunday and having a weekend like this was awesome. Who needs cake and ice cream?