Must be a Holiday Weekend?

[noelH]

Must be a Holiday Weekend? Impatient and intense traffic yesterday on the road down to the Marina.  Gale force winds forecasted was wrong. New forecast 5-10kt W. Marina gets too congested most weekends and worse during Holiday weekends. So sail when you can. Bumped into couple old acquaintance at the marina. Long lip flapping session. Good thing. Wind kept dropping. More accurate forecast would have been 5-10km/hr NE. At least the air temp was relatively warm. Went home. Not into drifting in lumpy seas.

Today's wind is weird. Dark lower level clouds are rolling in at high speed from the S. Wind at the house is from the N. Wind at Lake level based on the rollers and whitecaps is from the ESE. Wind is a bit on the strong side. Gust roaring, howling through the woods bending the trees. Also, it's only +8C. Must be a Holiday Weekend?

[Brian N.]

Went out for my first sail of the season and no surprise lots and lots of powerboats and PWC. Barely enough wind to keep the boat moving  (barely is the key word). Naturally, as I was ready to head in the wind picked up and became fairly gusty. However by that time I had already doused the sails and was motoring home before the ebb tide left the river too low to pass.

It was a fruitful shakedown sail as I fouled up the lines while attempting to raise the mast (twice, as the lines were such a mess I let it down halfway through the first attempt). Raising the mast is much easier and faster when I have crew. The Precision 165 has a fairly light mast, but still unwieldly. I do use a mast crutch and block for the jib sheet to aid raising/lowering but with crew it is a cakewalk. Anyway, all ye old salts and young ones too, stay safe.

[Brian N.]

You cannot view this attachment.

A picture of today's sail. Notice the glass-like water. Also, you may notice the line for my mast raising system attached to the bow pulpit.