We had a great sail today with Rachel and Dylan. I used to work with Rachel's father, and at Perry's retirement, we talked about getting out on the water. It was a beautiful day, and not quite as breezy as yesterday, when Ed and I took the boat just past the Ward's Island ferry dock, and headed right back to our dock.
We had a good breeze today, and started with a reef in the main, and a partially furled headsail. Much more comfortable than our last outing in brisk wind.
Rachel and Dylan do some sailing on Perry's 17 foot sailboat, on a small lake near Guelph. This was a bit of a change, and they did great! As we were returning to the club, I thought we could motor past the tall ships mooring at the harbourfront, but there they all were in a row setting sail out of the harbour. We got a great view of a few of them before they headed out the western gap to their next destination.
With a poor forecast for this afternoon, we were in no hurry to get to the yacht club. We were just arriving at the pier when we heard the Algonquin Queen II leaving the dock. Since we had an hour to wait, I took the opportunity to get some groceries for the weekend.
About half an hour before the tender was due, the sky got quite dark as a thunderstorm rolled through. We ducked under an awning which turned out to provide very little protection. When the tender arrived, we were already wet, so the walk to the boat through the pouring rain made no difference. No sooner did we leave the dock than the rain stopped. On the plus side, the wind picked up, which let us fly our big flag .
I opted to do a load of laundry to get the wet things in our bags dry again. While we were having a warming cup of tea, Tom brought his boat over to fix the windex on his boat. Rather than bring the mast down, I offered to go up. Easy with the help of the mast crane. I hope the repair holds.
Last season we didn't really have a lot of guests aboard, as the spring was cool and we we didn't really start sailing until mid June. This year looks much more promising.
On Sunday, Hayley, Derek, Rod, Jennifer & Greg came out for a sail. It was a warm day in the city but once we made it past the Leslie St. Spit, the wind really picked up, and we had a brisk sail out to Humber Bay and back, hitting a top speed of over 7 kts.
I think we have to work on setting our sails more appropriately when the wind gets into the high teens, as I get uncomfortable when the boat heels excessively, and it's difficult to steer with too much pressure on the sails. We also start to take on water in the cockpit when the discharge from the scupper drain is underwater due to the heel, because the hoses are plumbed backwards. That's one of those bothersome things we've talked about fixing since we got the boat. Maybe this year...
Last year, we used our spinnaker for the first time while cruising. Although it's a symmetrical spinnaker which should be flown with a spinnaker pole (sounds complicated), we used it as an asymmetrical, by attaching one corner to the headsail. Over the winter, Ed acquired a real asymmetrical spinnaker - somewhat larger than the last one, and with a different colour scheme.
With a flat lake and light wind on Saturday, we thought we'd try it out. We wisely tried raising it at the dock before we left. This spinnaker came with a snuffer - a sort of sock that slides over the sail to make it easier to raise and drop the sail.
We experimented a little to find how best to fly the sail, and discovered we could easily fly it on a beam reach, and somewhat downwind, but to go far downwind, we had to drop the main. It'll be fun to take this sail along with us on our annual cruise.
While our first sail last year wasn't until mid June, an unseasonably warm couple of weeks has allowed us to sail a couple of times already!
Sailpast was a beautiful warm day, with enough breeze that it was actually possible to sail, without feeling out of control. Ed and I went out onto the Lake the following day, and had a great sail. We planned to go out on Victoria Day as well, but our depth sounder alarm was sounding incessantly, even though we were in our mooring with 13.5 feet below the hull. Technical support was not very helpful - "try unplugging things until the alarm goes off....."
The alarm wasn't sounding today, so with a hot, humid day in the city, we set off for another sail. What a difference out on the lake. We had a good breeze, and I actually had to put a sweater on before we made it back. As soon as we headed back into the eastern gap, the heat returned. Not complaining!
We had a good breeze today, and started with a reef in the main, and a partially furled headsail. Much more comfortable than our last outing in brisk wind.
