Sailing has begun

Once again, it’s been too long since I wrote here. Bad blogger. Bad, bad blogger.

Anyway, the new/old boat and I have been sailing, at last. It had gotten pretty frustrating. I couldn’t get the engine started, but the mechanics at the marina kept giving me the message that it was working fine, although they were doling out the secrets to making it do so pretty grudgingly. Finally, this past Friday, I was finally at the marina at the same time as one (or more) of “the guys” (as the office folks there call them). He ran me through the procedures. And, sure enough, it worked.

Now, remember that this is the original engine in a 30-year-old boat. It is a single cylinder, two-stroke inboard, running on a mixture of gas and oil. Given all my difficulties with it, even after I learned its arcane secrets, my biggest worry was that I would be out on the lake, ready to come in, and it wouldn’t start, again. More about that later.

By 8 am Saturday morning, I had the engine running again, and was casting off the lines to back out of the slip. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get it into either forward or reverse gear, so the wind kindly pushed me into a nearby slip, with some help from a couple of guys walking by. We checked it out, lubricated the mechanism, and fixed that, so I was soon on my way under actual power, the engine clanking and whining as two-strokers tend to do.

Soon I was through the complicated channel leading from West Harbor to Lake Erie, giving myself some searoom to get the sails up and the engine off. I discovered then, and repeatedly as the day went of, that this boat, a Bayfield 25, is very responsive to the helm. Easy to steer, turns quickly. This also means that if my attention wanders, when I’m looking at a chart, for example, the boat will respond to slight movements of the tiller and head off in a completely different direction. If I leave the tiller to put up sails, get something from the icebox, or whatever, it tends to follow its own instincts, usually heading up into the wind under sail. Who knows where it will go under power? It comes about very easily, but while I’m winching in the jib, it could continue around and gybe or come back and tack again on its own.

Clearly, I need either someone else there to hold it on course, or I need to rig up some sort of self-steering rig to keep it on course while I do other things. These include such minor things as dealing with the sails, navigating (the Lake Erie shoreline is pretty featureless, especially in a haze like we had yesterday), staying hydrated, etc.

With sails up and engine off, the sailing was pretty good. Mostly there was a good breeze, not to hard to be worrisome my first time out, but enough to keep us moving. It did get lighter or at least less consistent in later afternoon. She’s not real fast, so I won’t be winning many races, unless there’s a class for old, small, heavy cruisers with semi-competent skippers, which, come to think of it, would probably be pretty popular. But she does sail pretty well. I haven’t managing to make her point as high I hope to, but I have some ideas about why. Practice might help a lot. Downwind, the main seems to blanket the genny quite easily, so I need to figure some things out there as well.

BTW, although I had some initial problems figuring out the roller furling on the genoa jib, it now works perfectly, which is a big help. I am rethinking my initial decision not to buy a pair of sailing gloves, however, since between the furling line and the jib sheets, my hands are pretty raw and blistery. I’m not certain I’ll be able to practice enough to develop a good set of calluses to avoid that.

Anyway, I spent most of the day sailing around South Bass Island, ending up farther east than I had really planned about mid afternoon. This wouldn’t have been a problem, except that the wind was roughly from the southwest, so I faced a long series of tacks to get back the marina, which seemed likely to take hours. I decided to start the engine to take a more directly route. I was nervous about whether it would be reliable enough to make it, plus it always feels like a defeat to motor when one could be sailing, but…

Anyway, the engine started right up, and we were going at a good clip for a while, although not always in the right direction, as I starting taking in the sails, and the boat decided to go off on its own. Then the engine started getting irregular. I fiddled with the throttle (as far as I can tell the optimal speed is whatever one the engine will go without threatening to stall). We continued on for a minute or two more. This time my fiddling didn’t work and the engine gradually slowed and died. Need I say that it wouldn’t start again? And, yes, there was, and is, plenty of gas. Perhaps, a block in the fuel line?

Anyway, there I was still miles from the entrance to the channel into West Harbor, with no engine. This fulfilled my fear mentioned above. The wind was from the exact direction making it impossible to sail into the harbor, since several legs of the channel would be directly into it.

Well, after a period of frustration-venting (read: cursing), I figured the immediate problem was to get to the entrance to the channel, which I could do under sail. I was right, though: it took a couple of hours of tacking into increasingly light and fluky winds. As I approached the entrance, I considered sailing in. I could have anchored inside the jetty if all else failed, although I might have been in the channel itself.

Instead, I tried waving people down, especially those in small motorboats. Mostly they didn’t see me or chose to ignore me. Finally, a young family on a jetski stopped. At first they didn’t believe me, but then they agreed to tow me up the channel. All went well and they dropped me at the fuel dock of the marina and refuse the $20 I offered for gas and time. At the marina, there were several people who helped get the boat back into its slip. Whew!

So, what do I need to do here? Can’t sail around here without an engine, not and get in and out of harbors and marinas. I’m wondering if it is even possible to make this one reliable enough. It seems unlikely that I could replace it with a modern diesel, since it might not fit and could be pretty expensive. I’m considering seeing if I can get a another engine of exactly the same type and take it apart at home to get to know it. The only other option that I can think of would be to put an outboard bracket on the stern and a new outboard. Wouldn’t look good but would work. In the meantime, I do need to get this one going.