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Catalina/Capri 25/250 Sailor's Forums

General Sailing Forum

I wanna see my boat! - I DID, I DID! [:D]

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ilnadi
Captain

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452 Posts

Initially Posted - 08/30/2006 : 12:25:12

Haven't been there since May (new baby, admiral starting grad school, code orange ozone weekends practically all July and August, you name it). Can't wait until it cools down enough to overnight with the 3-year-old (3 hour drive, so gotta sleep at dockside for any useful trip). Plus not brave enough to single-hand with 3-year-old on board yet and the admiral will not take the 3-month-old on board so I have to beg for crew.

Basically I am looking for sympathy, folks

(I <u>know</u> I am going to regret saying that)
(how come we don't have a smily with tears?)

Nadi ex-C25
http://www.sailblogs.com/member/enka
http://building-spindrift11s.blogspot.com/

Edited by - ilnadi on 09/13/2006 08:22:59

Frank Hopper
Past Commodore

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Pitcairn Island
6776 Posts

Response Posted - 08/31/2006 : 09:38:49

Edited by - on

Ericson33
Admiral

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USA
892 Posts

Response Posted - 08/31/2006 : 11:17:04

I have a three year old also, at this point I take him up to the lake and we play around on the boat in the slip. The only time I take him out is during the moonlight night sails the club has. Its already past his bed time when we go out so he is calmed down a bit. We go out during the dust hours because #1 the winds tend to die down at night, #2 its so dam quiet, #3 it's cooled down quite a bit.

When I take him up to the lake we tend to make a day of it. I will pack us lunch and we will eat lunch on the boat. I need him to keep busy with something so I like to get the hose out and I will wash the boat, and he will follow me washing everything down (note: you will get soaked so remember to take your cell phone out of your pocket). I will get the main sheet and the tiller loose and let him play around with the winches. It keeps his mind off of his toys, so he has allot of fun.

As for the moonlight sail, take your wife. The boat will no heal over with just the main sail up, and if the winds are light enough let her take the helm and you can rig up the jib. I took my wife out on a moonlight sail down in the gulf on a 50 ft cat. We had a captain and we sat forward on the trap drinking a bottle of wine. From there she was hooked. We bought a sailboat, and we went out solo for the first couple of sails.

OPB - Other peoples boats. Find a sailing club or lake closer to your house and ask around and see if they need crew. You and your wife can learn a life time of stuff in just one sail. Go out for a race, be rail meat, and watch what is going on. Your wife might be a little nervous at first, but she will begin to be comfortable with the heel of the boat. A very important thing here is that someone else will be in control of the boat, and this will give you time to talk about what is going on with the boat sitting down next to your wife. After the first race that my wife and I went on, she was now the person yelling out, and wanting the boat to go faster. She then took control of the spinnaker trimmers job, and when she got control of the spinnaker she really could fell the wind, and how she could control the boat. It took 3 to 4 races and now its become second nature to her, she now wants to win. Last years series we raced a total of 14 races, we placed 5th in the series.

This last year she has taken off, she wanted to spend more time with our son and give the baby sitter a break. We have raced 4 races this year with our best placing a second. We are by no means hardcore racers, It does give us the chance to go out, and have some fun. Now when we go out for a sail on our boat she is part of the team, she knows what to do and when to do it, Frankly she is a better sailor than I am right now. I still get a little nervous at the starting line with all of the boats coming into one point, the heal of the boat still makes me hold on tight to the tiller. It all takes time and practice. I have really enjoyed the racing, and she has too.

Edited by - on

ilnadi
Captain

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452 Posts

Response Posted - 09/13/2006 : 08:20:21

I did! I did!

Begged a friend to go sailing with us last weekend. Goal was to sail across the Neuse to Adams Creek and look for the porpoises we saw there before. At least it gave us a destination other than zig-zagging across the river. Drove down Saturday afternoon and slept on the boat Saturday night. It almost got chilly, I was pleasantly surprised. Of course all three of us got bit by mosquitoes pretty bad carrying bags to the boat before we covered ourselves in bug juice and ran away to the restaurant. In April I wiped a lot of mold from about every surface and did a lot of de-mildewing. It seems to have held. The outside of the boat needs another scrub but the inside was in pretty good shape. At least clean enough for Matt (who is pretty alergic) not needing to go sleep in the car.

Sunday we got up early! Managed to leave the marina about 10:30 with my daughter still sleeping below. The wind was blowing almost straight from the marina to the entrance to Adams Creek (which is part of the ICW; the entrance is about 2 nm from our marina). I managed to sail wing-n-wing part of the way (you can see the starboard turn on the track) wo we can get an angle into the creek. The wind clocked just enough near the other shore for us to not have to sail DDW into the creek and we managed to sail most of the way in. Even survived the huge power boat who managed to squeeze right between us and a channel marker instead of going around, without dropping his wake (I indulged myself with a one-finger salute). Not to say the rest of the boaters are not very nice and courteous, they drop out of wake and wave back to my daughter and all.

We dropped sails and floated around for 45 min or so in the wide part of the creek. This is the ICW, so the house-size power boats and barges go by periodically, having a side area to float in makes life much easier. Alas the porpoises were nowhere to be found, so I named the log entry "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish". We motored out of the creek, even successfully executed a MOB to recover the snack box that my daughter "liberated".

The wind had picked up a bit, so I reefed before we left the creek. We unfurled about half the genoa and had a short-but-fun ride home. Managed to hit 5knts with the terribly mis-shaped sails going upwind and 6 knts on a beam-to-close reach coming in. Since my daughter fell asleep in the v-berth before we left the creek (the woman can sleep in a rocking boat, sweating in a sleepign bag and show no ill effects, must have a cast-iron stomach) and we were coming in earlier than we needed to, we woke her up and did one big zig-zag so she can enjoy the ride too.

Tied up, cleaned up, showered. We bought BBQ from King's in Kingston on the way home, hoping it would soothe nerves frayed by trying to study while attending to a baby that decided he wants to breast-feed every hour (it worked, meat is to me what flowers are to most of y'all).

The picts and a short video are at (http://mattcj.dyndns.org/~ilnadi/gallery/v/Sailing/Adams/). There is a Google-Earth map of the track. It is not very exciting but Matt made it and I had not seen one before. So I posted that too.

Edited by - on

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