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.
