She Sails!
This entry was posted on 11/19/2007 1:26 PM and is filed under Trip Reports.
After being sick for about 3 weeks and too busy to have any fun prior to that, I finally got out for a sail yesterday. It was a beautiful day in Florida with barely a cloud in the sky, not too hot, not too cold -- and not much wind either. The weather report claimed 5-10 mph, but it seemed about 5 or less most of the time with an occasional puff up to 10.
The modifications I added to the trailer made solo launching possible. Even so it took about an hour to rig the boat at the ramp. This is fine if I was really a "coastal vagabond" but a bit long for a day sailor. At the Fort Desoto ramp there is a dock at the very end that almost nobody wants to use so I was able to rig the boat without being in anyone's way.
Launching from the dock was a tiny bit tricky because I had an onshore wind. I used my Greenland storm paddle to good effect to paddle away from the dock for enough room to raise the sail and get going. This was fine for the light winds I had, but probably would not have worked for 15 mph winds. I'm going to have to really think about alternate propulsion.
Once I cleared the dock the boat took off directly for Bunces Pass. She moved nicely in the light winds. The new yard made from oak made all the difference. The sail set properly and provided good drive. It would have been a really good day for the screacher, but I left it at home.
The new yard allows the sail to set properly.
Also, I added a very simple leeboard tie down. The lanyard is roughly 2 feet long and jams into a cleat on the leeboard rail. This cleat is one of those special break away cleats you can get at Duckworks. I also added some padding on the edge and the bottom of the rail. I was worried that the cleat was too close to the leeboard to be effective, but it worked really well. I don't know if it would work going 20 knots, but someday I hope to find out. This system does not provide any brake if the leeboard gets knock so I may need to add still more in this area. The padding on the underside of the leeboard guard should help.
You know it's a light wind day when a small bag of chips from your picnic lunch just sits there without being blown away.
A nice day on the water. I spent most of the day running at about 3-4 knots. I had occasional spurts a bit past 6 knots and a couple of times when I was only going about 2 knots. A kayak would have beaten me for sure on this day, but I'd make up for it when the wind came up.
A solo sailor needs to have at least some minimal self steering. This shows my quick setup which isn't really self steering, but I can let go of the tiller from time to time for cockpit chores and such. The standard Tiller Tamer line wasn't long enough to rig properly on my boat. The vaka hull is too narrow and the other tie in points were too wide. Even so it worked very well and held the boat on course for several minutes at a time. I'll have it properly rigged before the next trip.
I have some short video clips which I will try to add to YouTube in the next day or two.
