Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Dialed In

Last week I had my 25th sail on the boat and I'm really feeling comfortable in almost every condition.  I've had light days with more rowing than sailing as well as some really windy, gusty days where I don't have a free hand to even get a drink of water.  At this point I have the launch procedure fully dialed and it only takes me about 10 minutes from getting to the launch to sailing or rowing away from the dock.  The thing that slows me down the most is people asking questions about the boat and commenting on how pretty it is out on the water.

As far as performance goes, it just keeps getting better as I learn the lug rig.  I regularly hit 8-9 knots on the GPS once the boat gets up on a plane and had one 10.3 kts registered on the GPS on a windy quarter reach.  It is no slouch on any tack and while it won't quite point as high as a bermuda rig, it's close.  On a broad or quarter reach I regularly sail past performance dinghies.

Over time, I've changed very few things regarding rigging, but have made a few improvements. Most of the items have been rigging performance related including adding dog collars to the main and mizzen booms to keep them close to the mast.  The one big thing I still need to do is to replace the halyards with lower stretch Dynema core because over the course of a day out on the water, I have to keep vanging the main down to keep the sail shape taught because the current halyard stretches too much.  The only reason I haven't done it yet is because with a son off to college this fall, I don't want to spend the money.  I will swap out the halyard this winter.  

The only boat modifications so far are building a removable grate in the 'cooler' just aft of the mast so bilge water doesn't get everything too wet and a storage solution for the 2 piece oars that until just last week have been rolling around in the bottom of the boat.  This winter I have plans for building a tent over the boat for sleeping, but I have yet to do an overnight (that's on my list for this summer though).