Westsail 28

While some think this is a Halloween decoration, they don’t know the long history of dead babies and boats I’ve owned.

Jim and I went out yesterday for 3 hours. It was a sustained 20 with prolonged periods of 40 and a lovely 60 degrees with no rain – what more could you possibly ask for.

The engine alarm has been being a pain in the ass – the beep that goes off when the engine key is turned on but the engine is running – it hasn’t been turning off. It didn’t turn off at all this time so, snip-snip… no more noise! (Did I mention I’m a master electrician?)

The engine was apparently pissed at me for this. I learned that changing your oil isn’t completely idiot proof. I did a oil change a few weeks ago (the second since I’ve owned the boat) and though it’d gone smoothly. Fail. Right after we got outside the break water with a lee shore not to far away (sand spit off Golden Gardens) the engine died. Not good. We got the sails up and got out of danger. I went below and the engine had dumped all of it’s oil (this is going to be so much fun to clean up). Turns out when you remove the oil filter you need to make sure the rubber gasket comes with it. Sure enough there were two gaskets on the new oil filter. Ooops. Did a quick oil change underway and now the engine runs again. Thankfully Jim knows diesels – I would have never guessed this was the cause.

Sailing was pretty fun. Because of the gusts, we were usually under powered (double reefed main and stay-sail isn’t enough sail to move in 20). But – it was the perfect amount of sail for the 30-40 periods – which were fairly frequent. Like last winter we were able to make progress windward but, I’d still like that to improve.

Definitely need to add a 2:1 to the stay-sail setup – it was almost impossible to pull if you didn’t nail it during the tack. At one point the sheet was so jammed in the cleat that I had to use a winch to get it out (that’s when it was blowing 40+).

Also – the reefing system on the main is a death trap. The block and cleat for the jiffy reefing setup are mid boom. Well – mid boom + 30mph winds + 3-4 foot seas = boom flying all over hell and back – very dangerous. Need to fix that.

Things got kind of out of control off westpoint (Magnolia bluff) and we were just burying the bow and rail and getting slammed to stop by the waves – it was getting pointless. It was SO tempting to make a run for Port Townsend but forecasts for 60+ N of Everette had us think twice about that.

When we turned and ran for Shilshole we were doing a steady 7mph and hitting 8 on the bigger waves. Fun stuff. Totally over canvassed with a double reefed main and staysail – it was blowing a solid 35+ by then. Probably should have just dropped the main but, instead decided to fight a very squirely boat with a rudder the size of your front door – exhausting.

I was too busy to take pics… this is the only one I got yesterday. Taken on my iPhone while trying to steer in the rain storm that was chasing us back to dock.

Perfect sailing last night in south wind around 15. Les, Gina and I just did the Bainbridge run. We were hitting speeds of 7.5mph on the GPS – not bad for a boat with a 26′ waterline. We thought it’d be a wine-and-cheese cruise but, it was kind of too rough for picnic conditions. Pretty cool sunset.

We had fun watching Les perform near misses while steering with other boats, a huge car carrier and a tug towing something huge (oil?).

Finally saw Cascadia (that gorgeous boat at the end of L dock) under sail. That boat might just be worth the millions they sank into it – amazing.

I’ll be catching up on the summers sailing on the blog. I’ve been really bad about keeping this thing up.

I really need to replace my batteries – they’re close to useless at this point. Researching some options, specifically on how to increase the number of batteries, I came across this idea on the Westsail.org forum…

Interesting talk on preparing for a societies collapse. Dmitry Orlov, who lives on a sailboat in Salem, MA, discusses similarities between the USSR’s collapse and the possibility of the US’s collapse.

I think a lot of live-aboards will relate. It seems the self sufficiency, minimal living, being independent are important to us.

He’s also involved in the sail transport concept.

Dmitry Orlov – Seizing the Mid-Collapse Moment from Feasta on Vimeo.

This is unfortunately completely original…

10) You’re in the top 5% of world wide income and people are still dropping change in your coffee cup and mistaking you for a homeless dude.

9) You’re wishing the rain would come back because the snow is worse.

Jack Daniels – it’s not just for lunch anymore, goes well with rice for breakfast.

7) Working hunched over sitting cross legged in your v-berth finally seems normal.

6) You can’t even manage to keep the 10 square feet of living space on your 28 foot boat organized. You were cleaning mildew on Christmas.

5) You feel personally responsible for Amazon beating it’s projections in 2008.

4) You tried to help your friends through tough times and were completely dropped by them once they got back together and are the enemy for showing similar compassion to other people they completely fucked over.

3) You are prepackaged rice for christmas eve dinner.

2) Working Christmas Eve and morning, New Years Eve and morning was one of the better Christmas’ you’ve had in a while.

1) You received a hat and scarf for your Jack bottle.

Thanks to Kat’s awsome hand made gift at least the Jack was warm during last weeks snow storm!

I was stuck up in Maple Leaf (they haven’t heard of snow plows out here yet) but Jason snapped this pic for me when I asked him if the boat had sunk yet.

Kat gave me access to her Slingbox account… pretty cool for watching the OBama infomercial.

Splicing woven/braided/two-core line is pretty tricky. I bought a Selma Rope Splicing Kit because I wanted to replace my main sheet and that requires splicing. The directions it comes with were confusing (at least to me).

This two part video helped a lot though:

Final result… not perfect but not terrible:

Wow – seven year-olds are rambunctious! Gina’s god daughter Mari came down today and had a blast. She seemed to love the boat, especially the “cave” v-berth with a flash light. We made blueberry pancakes, visited Fisher, rowed around in the dinghy, played with the pointy toothed rabbit and generally just had a good time. She’s really smart and fun.

All pics up here.

I think Gina got the best shot of the day

Fisher and Mari

Team Zissou!

Mari and Gina