Westsail 28

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

Fisher just wrote a great post on morning-in-the-life… we were talking tonight about the curse/blessing of marina life. You have to walk these long slip ways to get to and from your boat. You have to use communal showers, laundry and parking lots. It doesn’t take long to know the other marina folk and there in lies the problem/blessing.

It’s virtually impossible to avoid talking to people down here which, on one hand, is wonderful – especially since they’re almost all super interesting people. But, when you’re in a hurry (I know – you shouldn’t ever be in a hurry) or really have to go to the bathroom it feels like running the gauntlet trying to avoid the normally great talks you just sort of run into all over down here.

Take yesterday. I was kind of looking forward to doing nothing and zoning out (I’m ambitious that way) but, I ran into Fisher. It was windy and I think I was literally incapable of not saying “lets go sailing” – because, well, that’s why we do this insane boat lifestyle. Well – he was helping J & C move out of their Lake Union house boat onto their sailboat (yeah – they have it rough). So – of course – I had to help too and 30 minutes later we’re over at the house boat moving stuff.

We got free pizza out of it and I got to prove once again that a 1976 BMW 2002 is the ultimate vehicle – especially for aspiring dinghy sailors… Fisher’s El Toro:

In other news – I’ve been eating omelets and pancakes for dinner lately and dinner stuff for breakfast. I probably need to start drinking again soon. Dinner of winners:

Thanks Fisher nice shot. I’m still not sure about the flags – kind of not-necessary and thus not-needed and thus shouldn’t be there…. hmmm

As usual – those waves were a lot bigger than they look. We were actually getting a fair bit of water on deck and waves in the face fairly often that day. She sailed beautifully under main and stay sail though – was even really well balanced. Couldn’t point too high but seemed to be keeping up with others out there that day and could have definitely clawed off a lee shore if need be.

All pics from this trip up here.

C&J finally got Hello World ready to sail so, it was off to Blake Island for their first trip. It was beautiful but dead calm on the way down.

Geek note: You can totally navigate using your iPhone if you get iNavX – pretty handy alternative to idiot proof navigation if you don’t want to haul out the laptop. Best on the new iPhone since it has GPS.

They got a mooring ball but Gina and I had to anchor. FYI – Anchoring options suck on Blake and, even in calm conditions it was a rocky night. We anchored in pretty strong current in 45′ of water. Check out this current – this was at anchor coming back in the dinghy. This is on the South side of Blake Island.

I made up some French Beef Stew and Gina made some Raspberry pie. Fun dinner and the sunset was gorgeous.

I had a pretty sleepless night. Had something gone south with the anchor we’d have been on shore in minutes given the current. We were also rocking pretty hard. But, nothing went wrong so, I should just stop my bitching.

We had pancakes the next morning and then headed out into winds that were 15-25 and on the nose. Tons of fun. Sailed most of the way to West Point under stay sail and then put up the jib for the last bit since the wind died down to 10-15. It doesn’t get much more fun than this on the sound and, for Sept/Oct the weather couldn’t have been any better.

Off Seattle we crossed paths with Jim Rowen’s absolutely beautiful, tan bark sail, Westsail 28. I was Captain Slow Motion on the camera – so this is the only pic I got of her… gorgeous boat. We’re so unused to seeing Westsail 28’s under sail (this is a first for us) that we were like “Wow – that’s a really cute boat, I wonder what it is” until it dawned on us… doh!

Here’s Hello World under sail:

More pics of her here and videos here and here.

Off Seattle we were passed (several times) by this crazy ass kite-surfer. Man does that look like fun, gotta learn how to do that.

Off West Point we saw Grady out racing on Slingshot… nice J boat!

Pretty nice weekend. Some parting shots:

Crossing paths with Hello World

The new Tibetan Prayer Flags on my boat against some killer sunset action.

Dear Westsail,

While I love your portly lines and sluggish, but rugged, misdemeanor there’s a new pipe dream in town. My friend Conway turned me onto to the Mini Transat 650’s a few years ago since he knew my love of discomfort and all things completely ridiculous. Well, now there’s a US company (m65usa.com) making these new, ready to hit the seas for $50K. That’s $50K for a boat that can (and regularly does) go just about anywhere off shore, can hit 20+ knots, is designed for single handing. Basically – a mini open 60. Sweet. I might have to order one of these when I get a job and really sail to Alaska, not do this inane motor, motor thing. I can just take showers on J&C’s boat

And check out the footage on YouTube.

I tried to make Orangette’s Banana Bread (great foodie blog, thanks for the tip Brian) yesterday (recipe mirrored here).

It didn’t come out so great. The bananas needed to be about 3 weeks older (impatient I am) and I need to muck around with tin-foil next time to keep the top from burning in the toaster oven (I don’t have a normal oven). But, it wasn’t horrible and was a good first step. Banana bread will be nice to have all winter (which, I might add, is already here… brrrrrr!)

Verdict?  Awesome!  Difficulting?  Must be able to draw a line and use an electric carving knife.

As far as I know the cushons in the Westsail 28 are originals – and they don’t increase in value or comfort with age.  I’ll eventually replace all of them but, for now, I added a 3″ Memory Foam Topper to the V-Berth and, OMG, so nice!

If you’re on a 30′ or so boat chances are you need to get a King (but measure anyway).  That’ll run you around $170 at Costco..

You then just need to draw an outline using your current mattress pieces. Make it a bit bigger, memory foam compacts easily and you can always do a final trim in the boat.

Then use an electric carving knife to cut through the foam. It’s like slicing butter – ridiculously easy.

I’m a bit concerned about mildew – but, we’ll see how the winter goes. Sleep wise it doesn’t get much better.

I had to get out of here so I headed for Poulsbo on Tuesday. Made it over there in around 5 hours, sailing most of the way. Didn’t even bother to go to shore in the morning, but just got up and sailed back. Pretty harbor but the sailing is pretty random (wind wise) once you get through Agate pass… lot’s a swirly winds. I was going to stay the week but I had an appointment downtown today so decided to come home.

Wing on winging it through Agate pass

Poulsbo – huge anchorage field… not sure where the dinghy dock is though

S-curve entrance to Poulsbo. I literally had the wind do a complete 180 in there 5 times on the way out.