9/05/01

I hit West marine today. I got one new batten for the main. (I lost all of them it turns out during my ass kicking I received the other day. I also got a pulley to rig the topping lift correctly, a Lake Champlain Chart book, and a couple of sail ties. The sail ties turned out to be too tight, and they are hard to get on. They are bungee cords, and one of them got loose when I was taking down the main. It shot out about 30 ft, and splashed in the water, but we couldn’t find it. (I think they float) Oh well they say boats are just a hole in the water to throw money at. Well I shoot money into the water.

After the other day I decided that I really wanted to have the depth finder rigged up, so I wired it in. To my surprise it worked well, and told us our depth. Lake Champlain gets pretty deep in places. We registered 419 ft off of Charlotte. Tom and I headed out around 5:00 with a decent North West wind. The motor started on the second try, and we had the sails up in no time. As we headed out into the real lake we started to get some good wind. Like I said before I was still a little unnerved by my exciting day, so I was a little timid. After a couple of minutes we had the sails properly trimmed, and we enjoying a perfect fall day. The temp was around 68, but it was a beautiful sunny evening. We headed up into the wind, and tacked back across the lake a couple of times. The winches were hard to get used to. They aren’t self tailing, and they probably need lubricating. We found that for anything but a very serious wind hand sheeting the jib works great.

The main sheet is still far too long, but we didn’t have any tangling problems. The system works great, put I do need to get a larger shackle to mount the bottom block to the post. It doesn’t slide very well, so it can get caught sometimes when you tack. Tom and I also re-attached the boom track, which got pulled off the on Monday. It isn’t quite right, so this winter I will work on it.

All in all we had a great sail and motored in as the wind died and the sun disappeared. We talked about girls, beer and life, but mostly I think we were both happy to be out on the lake. The old girl is still leaking some, too much really, and tomorrow she might get pulled. I still haven’t decided whether to spend the $120 bucks and have her pulled for the night so I can try to find the leaks, and either 4200 them, or refasten. It is either that, or have her pulled for the season. I might try to hang on for a couple of days longer. Today’s sail was inspiring.

Well I have been wavering on what to name her. She has been named Patience, and I didn’t think much of it. I was going to name her “Nara til Valhalla,” but I have thought better of it. If there is one thing that I have learned with the old girl it is to have some patience. So she gets to keep her old name. I think she felt better, and the gods only gave me a small punishing the other day.

The single biggest discovery that we made today was that while the winch handles aren’t really necessary for the jib they fit and open a beer bottle perfectly. It is simply amazing. I’m sure some crafty Swede or Dane grabbed a beer bottle when they made the design.

She didn’t go particularly fast, but she pointed up into the wind reasonably well, and the rudder is responsive and light. She is also pretty forgiving and will tack without much headway. After a few more days I will be comfortable single-handing her. I still really need to rig up some lazy jacks for the main though. I didn’t do the best job of furling her sails. At the same time I think it would be pretty nice to have a roller furling system on the Job. I know it isn’t allowed in class rules, but for me alone it would make life a bit easier.

Until next time.

Noah