9/06/01

Tom, Ben Chickowski and I had a good sail. Not really much wind to speak of, but all the same it was a nice time. I keep stating how great the weather is, but I’m not going over board. It has been truly beautiful the last couple of days. The sun set over the Adirondacks, and left the lake covered in Purple and blue waves. There is something very special about being on 400 ft of water watching fish jump and the sunset. On the way back we were moving slowly, around 1mph, which was actually pretty surprising. There was no wind to speak of, and the sails were totally luffed, but we still we making headway. As the sun went down another owner of a classic sailboat came sailing up, and we had a brief chat. It was built in 1964, but I can’t remember the class. It might have been called a Constellation. Pretty boat, and it was moving very quickly for there being no wind. He had a very large Genoa, which looked like it was doing most of the work.

Anyway Tom brought his GPS unit, so we got to see how fast we were going. At max throttle with the outboard we made around 6.3 MPH, which is pretty good for a 7.5 HP engine-pushing 5000lbs of boat. Sailing with around a 5mph wind we were making 3.5 mph. We never really made it past Thompson’s point, but it was still a great sail. The wind was out of the South East, and slowly moved to the Southwest. By sundown it was gone.

The boat is still leaking. The bilge pump comes on for 1.5 minutes every 7. I need to decide what I’m going to do with her. I have 3 options. I can dive down tomorrow and try to slick seam all the places where she is leaking, and then get a second battery and leave her on the mooring, I can pull her overnight and try to goop in some 5200 into the seams where she is leaking, or I can have her pulled for the year. Total it will cost around 200 either way to leave her in, and it would be included in my yearly rate to have her pulled for good. I’m going to sleep on it.

I cleaned up some of the mess aboard, put all my different fasteners into a nice container, cut down the mainsheet, and made the Topping lift much easier to use. She is getting pretty close to ship shape. The masthead light works, as do the two running lights, but the stern light still doesn’t. I will have to check my connections…

I also need to purchase some flares. I can’t seem to find one bag that contains a few more parts and the flares that I already got at west marine. They must have gotten thrown away. Too bad really as I bet there way $40 dollars worth of stuff in it. Always keep your boat ship shape. The mainsail ties that I got are terrible. They are too tight, and the bungees are very dangerous. I got nailed in the head tonight and it really hurt.

I still need to find a pretty girl to go sailing with me. The girl at the Co-op really wants to go, but I missed her today. If I keep the boat in the water next week we can go. The Co-op was a pretty busy place today. I saw and talked to a couple of nice girls. Rare.

It is strange. This town is filled with total ravishing women, but I can’t find any of them to talk to… I constantly wonder if somehow our society has fallen out of whack. We become isolated, and all I can see is people wanting to meet each other, but having no way to do it. Part of our isolation is human nature, but I think that we can beat it. Somehow. Suburbs must be the root of all our problems.

Well tomorrow will be a busy day.

Noah