Sailing all Day in Key West!

We rented a Hobie 16 from the Sunset Watersports guys on Smathers Beach Saturday. The best deal ending up being a beach pass, which gave us unlimited access to whatever toys they have for the whole day. The guys had a hard time accepting that neither of us was interested in parasailing. They asked at least three times if we were sure we didn't want to go and each time we replied negatively, they said, "Well, you can make up your mind about it later. The last boat goes out at 4."

I think they were still shaking their heads as we walked away at 4 and headed back to town on our bikes.

The wind was great the whole time, blowing out of the North, steady 15 kts early and gusting up to 20. In the afternoon, toward the end of our second session, we got a nice sustained 20+ kt wind and we were about two inches away from flying the windward hull. Very fun, thrilling beam reach!

I can see why they are warm-weather boats, however. The water flys around and with the sun mostly hiding behind clouds, Kris was chicken-skinned from head-to-toe for most of our sailing.

I ditched my shirt and I've got a nice red-tint to my skin. Happy for a sunburn on my Willamette Valley winter skin.

We saw a trio of keelboats working West a bit outside of where we were, so we sailed right out to them and gybed onto their line. We passed all three of them in short order. They all had their Key West Race Week placards on their bows and looked to be in the 20' range. Not sure what class/boat-type, though. (Addendum: looks like they were J 80s.)

The Hobie is pretty easy to get caught in irons, we found out quickly. Tacking into the wind is a touchy business and we spent a bit of time blaming each other. Me, certain that Kris wasn't working the jib properly through the turn and Kris repeating, "What did you do?" each time we'd heave up and stall.

We gybed okay, however, so tried to approach everything that way. Which must have looked funny when we sailed back to the beach, directly into the wind, and did loops at each of our tacking points. But maybe experienced sailors thought we were just showing off ...

We will probably try it again on Monday and see if we can master the Hobie Cat tack.

We ended the day with a bottle of rum and a game of dominoes in the galley onboard Appledore. Looking forward to sailing on that boat this afternoon.

Recycled Adventure

I posted this one a little over a year ago when I launched this dinghy adventure.

... and I want some comments this time, my friends. Otherwise, I'm hunger-striking, or something like that.

Book Review: We the Navigators - The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific

I'm about halfway through this one and enjoying it immensely, although I don't know that I would recommend it to most. David Lewis is the author, and he turns out to be quite a prolific writer, mostly covering things Polynesian.

Born on some island off the coast of France, Mr. Lewis was raised in New Zealand and Rarotonga, where he attended a Polynesian school. He later studied to become a doctor and after many years practicing medicine, including some involvement of the establishment of the British National Health Service, he set off to circumnavigate the world in a sailboat and then into a second career as a sailor. He built his own catamaran and completed the first recorded circumnav of the world in a multihull.

Maybe you all know these things, but he's new to me and most interesting for his disciplined study of Polynesian navigation methods. I was fascinated by the concept of navigating without instruments and have always wanted to know more about how the Pacific Islanders moved about and established themselves in such an enormous expanse of open ocean with no modern navigation tools.

This book does an excellent job (so far) of detailing how the indigenous sailors of the Pacific use only the things they can see to determine where to find land.

With tribal knowledge passed on through rote learning, the subjects of Dr. Lewis's study seem to be able to establish their location by stars and sun position and then maintain course through periods of cloud cover by orienting themselves to the running ocean swells. Coupled with the detailed drawings and explanations of the primitive sailing vessels they piloted, the scientific research approach to understanding the navigation methods is turning into quite a page-turner for me.

If my life was not so much on the go these days, I'd love to write more of these reviews. I've got a stack of about twenty books lined up to read, many of a similar sort as this one. And I've got another twenty that I've read in the past nine months that have mostly been recaps of sailors trips around the world.

Thanks T-man.

Addendum: Some Older Reviews
A Family Cruise
A Family Cruise Gone Horribly Awry - NOT a light read

Test Sail: Beneteau 323 - We Likey

Almost a beautiful day for sailing. The wind was a healthy 15 knots and out of the South. The only bummer was it started raining toward the end and it was a bit cold.


The smile on Kris's face belies the cold.


Note the professional looking gloves, too.

We liked her a lot. Great wind today and we were able to hold a straight line up the river, turn into the wind follow the same line back downriver, hitting over 7 knots a couple of times on the upriver reach.


Part of Kris's sailing smile is attributable to the saloon table's six-bottle wine holder, which you can see right here in front of her.

Test Sail: Beneteau 323

Kris and I are going to take this little beauty out on Saturday. She's not the world cruiser we expect to head for blue water in, but we are thinking a couple of years of river sailing in something like this, might be the best next step as we build our skills.

I think that future boat is going to be an Island Packet. Those boats really speak to me.

Anyway, this one is affordable for now, in great shape, and possesses the important things that Kris looks for in a boat: built-in wine racks.

Yaghan's RTW

Been following this Swedish couple on their circumnav. They are a couple hundred nm from Brazil and will cross their departure path there, thereby completing a round trip.

They will celebrate with a ten-day stop in Brazil during Carnival!

They have some links in their blog to good video of their adventures on Swedish TV, also.

An August Passing

This blog took a new tack back in September, inspired by Kris's and my determination to set ourselves a new course in life. I recounted that in our Bidness post.

Just this week, Adam over at Messing About in Sailboats posted his own manifesto, or at least the opening shot. He has set his year and intends on sailing off to the Caribbean in 2014. We are supposed to track him and hold him to his word, in support of his pursuing his dream.

Kris and I have an article posted on our home office wall. It's a similar piece to the one that Adam references in his post. If you look around enough, you can find them. They are the one's telling you to make the leap.

I told Kris about Adam's post and read the inspiring passage to her. She was as touched as I. Today she sent me her date. We have been shooting for somewhere in the 4-6 year range, with our eye on 2014, also. Now we have an actual month, August, and a day, the 15th.

Thanks, Adam.

The Wrath of the Gypsy Pirate Wench

We got in on a sunset sail with the GPW, taking a trip out on the Liberty Schooner. It was a nice little cruise on a beautiful big boat. It was fun hauling the sails up, too. I tried to get at the back of the rope line and the crew moved me up right behind them and made me work. Good thing I'm married, because my forearms are still wiped from hauling that thing up. (This is officially not a family blog.)

Kris had a chance to helm the schooner and we had to pry it away from her, AGAIN. She's showing her true colors each time she gets a chance to go sailing; she somehow ends up with the wheel in hand.

With Kris hogging the helm so often, I expect our boat's autopilot will have a pretty cake job once we get ourselves onboard and underway. Taking applications now.

Jolea also managed to get us into a cabaret show in which I ended up on the stage as the center of attention from a young lady of dubious origin.

I think I PRed last night. I would have thought it was a world record for drunkeness, but I'm in Key West and there seem to be some champions here that are far and away past what I'm capable of.

What a day ... and night.

We hit the pool this morning to help us feel human again. Now we are off to meet the schooner kid and see if we can wrangle a ride on the Adirondack II. She was out last night the same time as us, but managed to sail a hell of a lot further. She's a fast one and we look forward to the chance to sail her today.

Pictures to come!

Avast! Who needs crew from Key West?

Anybody out there in blogosphericaland need two crew on either Friday or Saturday, January 9-10 out of Key West or thereabouts?

We are spending a long weekend down there and our only other option is to sit in Captain Tony's and drink Papa Dobles all weekend.

Wait, that's not such a bad option, is it?

My Chops: Busted

We sailed on Sunday and it was a beautimous day! Click that link to read all about it.

On a side note, since there was essentially no wind on Sunday, we mostly floated and told sea stories. The best had to be Shannon the Real Sailors recap of his Cascade Locks to Hood River race experience. The pictures there are great.

The story's even better when he starts talking about their attempt to recover from the mast-busting end to their racing day.

Apparently, they got out their pathetic little motor and could barely make any way against the Columbia waves and current. They limped into a little cove just out of the main river channel to recover their gear and situate themselves when a local came down and started yelling at them to get off his property. They explained what they'd just been through, if he couldn't tell from the wreckage strewn all over the boat and dragging in the water.

At this point Shannon ranted to us about the international sanctity regarding offering aid to a boat in distress. As polite as they tried to be, asking the guy if they could just use his little dock for a couple of minutes to get themselves situated, they found themselves staring down the unrelenting get-back grandson of former Lewis and Clark hosts.

Yeah, the guy told them to get lost because "the white man has been taking our land from us for too many years. I don't want you on mine." Whoops. They were on somebody's fishing reservation and they were not getting aid in the face of this disaster, no matter what.

So, best they could, back out in the Columbia to try and make way to a boat pull-out.

Our Dinghy Adventures

I am going to start another blog to cover our adventures in our dinghy. I'll keep it here. I don't know how practical it is to keep two of these things going, but the Log of the s/v Clarity is for the boat that we plan on sailing out of Portland with someday and I started this blog to track our progress to that end. I'll keep up with that progress here and chart our dinghy learning curve at Love and Coconuts.

Where did the name come from? Look back through these old posts and you'll see where love and coconuts came from.

In the search to satisfy our dinghy longings, we looked around at a few boats and debated how much time and effort we wanted to put into restoration, versus buying something that we could sail away in tomorrow. I looked at a Lido 14 on Sunday, but it had a few issues, including a need for new hardware and fabrication to get the tiller back in place. On the way home I stopped by the local yacht dealer to see the new big boats just arriving. They have a couple dozen big cruisers in the water, and a handful of trailerable boats in the parking lot.

This day I saw a newly arrived Hunter 170, very clean and they hadn't even put up signage. It also hadn''t appear in their brokerage list yet, so I had to track somebody down and find out the details. I went looking for somebody on the docks and took the girls along to also look at boats. We were down there for about ten minutes before my 5 y/o fell in the river trying to step across to the transom of a Hunter 38.

They are both very polite and the 7 y/o had asked "Permission to go aboard, sir." Unfortunately, sibling rivalry took over at that point and in the mad dash to be onboard ahead of one another, the younger mis-judged the gap and went in feet first.

I was able to fish her out pretty quickly, since she had on her super-floaty lifejacket and was armlength's away from me when she went in. We dried her off with some towels borrowed from a passerby and had to head home early.

I called back and got the scoop on the boat. Went and looked at her this morning with the broker. Took Kris over there to look at lunch and then made an offer, it got accepted and the check is now on the way from the bank. I'm expecting to swap the money for the title on Thursday/Friday. Here she is, sporting fall colors just off Tomahawk Island Drive on Hayden Island.

The 170 is an all plastic boat with a self-furling foresail and a nicely roached main. This one is in excellent condition. The previous owner bought her new in 2000 and has only sailed her about 20 hours, while storing her indoors. The sail covers are still a shiny dark Hunter blue and the sails are very crip.

The only thing I plan on doing right away is adding a boom kicker to save everyone's heads. Don't want to lose any crew to a head injury before they get a chance to give it up for some other reason, like having to sail in rain all the time.

Woohoo!

Tillerman's Quest

Oh, crap. We are going to have to write more about sailing.

Swell blogger

I started following Liz Clark's adventure on her Cal 40 "Swell" after reading about her in one of my surf magazines. She's a cute little surfer girl, but no lightweight. She knows her surfing and writes honestly about her struggles with backside barrels on Tuamotu reefs, amongst other adventures. She gets down and dirty in the maintenance of her 40+ year-old yacht and she is doing a ton of solo sailing, making stops at isolated reefs all around the Pacific.

I love her blog and find her pictures outstanding! Tons of great shots at sea, as well as in places like Kiribati, Bora Bora, Tuamotus, on and on. She's got a great eye, capturing the beauty in details of local life, realistic shots of the daily life in the boatyard, alongside postcard-worthy images of islands adrift in amazing seascapes. AND the girl can write. I predict a successful book in the future.

Someone take the wheel

Kris and I arrived a little early to The Sailing Life dock for our Saturday morning sail, so we kicked around and looked at boats. I think anybody who's thinking about making the move to a boat should plan on spending multiple hours/days looking at boats. Kris and I found this story by Suzanne Giesemann very inspiring. We are getting a steady education looking over any and all possible boats. It's even a little tempting to fly out to Annapolis for the big boat show in two weeks, but I'm not sure we'll do it.

The Sailing Life had a newly arrived Beneteau 40' in the commissioning stage. Still had some grease pen notes on the hull and the mast had yet to be stepped, but it was in the water.

We looked around at a few of our favorites, the Hunter Deck Salon models being at the top of the list. There are two DS 45s (picture to left from Hunter Web site) and one DS 41 in the vicinity. The 45s have been sold and the 41 is still available. We are both very interested in these models as they have more room in the main salon for living, as well as for storage.

Our boat for today's sail was the Hunter 38. This 2008 model had been sold to someone locally, who used it for less than a year and decided to bump up to one of the DS 45s moored a couple of slips away. So, she's in excellent condition and the main salon still has that new boat smell.

Kevin briefed us quickly on our roles for mooring when we returned and we were underway. After we got out in the main channel, Kevin gave me the helm, pulled up and stowed the bumpers, and started prepping us to get under sail. I helmed us out to the main river channel and then handed it over to Kris so I could go help Kevin and learn a little about how to setup and trim this boat's sails. That was the last I had my hands on the helm.

Kris was reluctant to take the wheel, even though she was sitting right next to it, and I ended the discussion by just walking away and telling her it was all her's. The winds were very light and blowing upriver, but it was a joy to shut the engine down once we hauled out the mainsail. After that we unfurled the foresail and made an easy 1/2 knot across the Columbia on a port reach, occasional puffs giving us the slightest bit of heel. We jibed upriver a couple of times, fell off, turned her into the wind, and began tacking back down the river, the apparent wind picking up noticeably.

Kris was excitedly calling out the boat speed as the wind picked up and bubbles began to flow under the transom behind us, our speed inching up toward three knots in a close reach to starboard.

There was nothing near a regatta, but a handful of boats were playing around in the light air. Our early fall day warmed steadily, turning into a nice day as the afternoon approached.

I'm sure Kevin thought we were pretty goofy, although he was a good sport and answered all of our questions about the boat, sail trim, and the local yachting/racing scene. He even shared some of his own adventures from the local beer can and club races.

After a couple of tacks down river we came about and pointed her into the wind so we could start up the diesel, haul in the sails, and head back to the dock in time for a late lunch.

Guess who helmed us back in the channel?