New Sailing Adventures

Well, at long last, more sailng has occurred, but not without incident. For some reason my marina, which bills itself as "full service," but they didn't seem to want to work on my engine. In fact, they took to ignoring me entirely after failing to respond to office visits, phone calls, and emails. They even ignored an email request for the names of others who could fix the motor. I found the marina who did work on my own, but it turns out to be about the best in the area. At any rate, they rebuilt the carburetor and replaced the fuel pickup line, which was sucking air instead of gasoline.

So last weekend, I headed up to the lake Friday evening. Fairly early on Saturday I headed out into the lake. The motor was working fine, although I need some practice. In reverse, the boat seems to pull hard to port (or maybe it was me trying to avoid hittng the dock), so I ended up backing out of the lagoon and turning in a more open spot. I tended to run it too fast to make sure it didn't stall.

Everything worked fine down the channel and out into the lake. Once outside, I tried to head away from other boats to give myself plenty of room to put up the sails. I'm still having trouble getting the boat to stay on course while I'm doing other things besides steering. I hope to install a tiller tamer next weekend.

Putting up the mainsail is exciting, as I jump back and forth between the various sail controls and the tiller. The jib is a little easier, with the roller furling. I have mixed feelings about roller furling, but I have to admit that it helps me a lot as I learn the boat.

Once I had the sails up, I shut down the engine... and sat. No wind. No wind for several hours. Well, okay, some wind occasionally. But there were times when the boat turned 180 degrees in the direction opposite to where I was steering. After hours of frustration, I finally decided to head back in. Trouble was that I couldn't sail any faster in that direction than in the direction I originally headed.

Early to mid afternoon, I decided to start the engine to go back in. Everything worked fine and as I straightened up from the controls, I was amazed at how fast I was moving, given the wind I now felt on my face. Then I realized that it was real wind. In the few seconds or a minute that it took me to start then engine and get moving, a nice breeze had sprung up.

I decided to do some real sailing and shut down the engine, noticing once I did that I couldn't get it into neutral. More about that later.

The sailing was good. The boat continues to be a good aailor, and maybe I'm getting better, too. Another small sailboat was coming up behind me on the same heading, but once I got things squared away, I began to pull away from it. It might have been a bit smaller, but it was still in the 20-25 foot range. And in LWL, it was probably comparable.

I decided to head back in fairly early in case I had trouble. With the engine failing to go into neutral, trouble was pretty much guaranteed. Like a car with an automatic transmission, the engine will not start unless it is in neutral. I tried WD 40 on everything I could find, but no luck. Either I'm doing something wrong again (always a possibility) or something is frozen in the transmission.

The wind was very close to being right for sailing into the harbor, though, so I decided to try it. It also helped that no one responded on the radio to me. Sigh.

The trouble is that one leg of the channel was nearly into the wind, plus the trees blanket the wind so much that I didn't have much power to the sails. I suspect that if I had had a sweep and an oarlock on the stern, I might have been able to move it up that part of the channel. As it was, I got another tow.

"Ah have always depended on the kindness of strangers."

The dropped me at the fuel dock, and I went looking for someone with a dingy. Oddly, the marina seems to not have an inflatable dingy with which to help out in situations like this. I KNOW I'm not the only one to need this kind of thing. But they don't.

There is someone at the marina who frequently helps people out, and he stepped up this time. This guy, and his boat Emerald, were aamazing. It is a large twin-engine motorboat, definitely larger than mine. I was expecting a dingy or jetski, but he brought this out of his slip and out to the fuel dock, stopping inches from Happy Pause. Instead of using a line from his stern to my bow, he has us lash mine to his port side. It seemed overkill at first, but it worked out brilliantly.

We headed into the marina side by side. I directing him to the right slip, but he was in control. He brought me up to the slip and stopped dead. I removed the lines holding me to his boat, and he used his boat to gently push me in. His boat never touched mine, but he made small waves that got me moving. It was amazing. He could control his boat to within inches. I try to keep my boat feet or yards from anyone else to avoid damage. He had the twin engines, which help a lot, but mostly it is a matter of skill and practice. As I said, when we were done, "Thanks. That was masterful." He admitted that he had done it a thousand times before.

I cleaned up the boat, put everything away, and made it shipshape again. After a shower, I went to get some dinner and returned exhausted for a good night's sleep. Now I have to get a mechanic out there again.