The New Adventures of Allie Cat

[iyamwhatiyam]

While I was hard at work typing on a computer screen, Tammy was on the boat making a constant diameter splice for the first time on our new roller furling line, the old one was pretty frayed. What an SOB I was for not being there to help out, her hands were pretty raw by the time she got finished. Now, I have never had the luxury of a (Hood) roller furler of my own before. To look at it very simply, it seems to act the same as a block and tackle as far as the line goes, just like a pulley mechanism where the line goes into and around the furler at the bottom. So we thought it would just spin and spin and spin ad infinitum which is why Tammy spliced the line into a nice big loop. Well, it seems to reach a point and stop. Not sure if it is a feature or a bug, so next we plan to detach the sheets and see how it behaves just messing with the furler line.

We learned from my stupid mistake taking the boat out without consulting tides, (our marina is on the ICW). The boat had been at the dock way too long and by george we were going to take it out!

Set out north towards the St Johns River, got to the point where we had return,(my late start, another mistake). Against the out rushing tide. Allie Cat has a coarse pitch prop and I was pushing the 25 HP Universal XP. It started smoking dumping carbon out in the exhaust so WHOA lets throttle back. Need to put a standard prop on her before we really start traveling. Made it back the marina entrance during daylight,(did I mention we have a winged keel, 3' 10" draft). CAREFULLY maneuvering, all ahead SLOW, stay between the poles. OK! Almost there, within spitting distance of our slip almost. Except no one told us to turn hard to port after the last two markers. So THAT'S were they dredge!!!

Well, let's see, it's dead low tide, There's a lag for the incoming tide to enter the ICW. It's almost 8 PM. Well, that gave Tammy and I plenty of time to just hang out together and see a little bit of what living on the boat is going to be like. We lifted out of the muck about 2:00 AM and docked.