Association Forum - A good afternoon's sail

Assn Members Area · Join

Home.

Association Forum

Ships Store

Cruising

Racing

Technical Tips

Photo Gallery - New

Boat Search - Updated

Manuals & Brochures

Swap Meet

Links

Officer Flag Line & Staff

Bylaws & Constitution

Members Area

Join the Association

Notice:
The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ.
The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.

Association Forum

Username:	Password:
Save Password
Forgot your Password?

All Forums

Catalina/Capri 25/250 Sailor's Forums

General Sailing Forum

A good afternoon's sail

New Topic

Topic Locked

Printer Friendly

Author

Topic

delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

Member Avatar

USA
4479 Posts

Initially Posted - 07/30/2011 : 22:48:09

Rita & I took SL out for an afternoon sail today. We were supposed to be babysitting for some friends, but they changed their mind at the last minute, so we took advantage of the 80°+ weather and fairly light winds. Last time out we had a great sail until the last 20 minutes or so, which was sheer terror for Rita. The wind piped up to about 10kts, and with our tall rig, that's enough to heel at 20° or so. She'll tolerate up to about 10°, but she's biting her lip and white knuckling it.

Today I was determined that we'd have none of that so she'd have a good time. We decided to just sail on our 110 jib. NOAA was predicting up to 10kts of wind, rising to 15 by around 7pm. I'd guess it was really blowing around 4-6kts most of the time, and so we had a pretty sedate sail on just the jib, but that was perfect. I don't think we ever broke 4kts all day, but we also never heeled more than maybe 5° all day.

I had Rita on the tiller most of the day while I worked the jib sheets. Showed her how to steer to the tell tales to keep laminar flow across the sail, which you can see here:

Rita watching the jib tell tales...

We had a little excitement right at the end, we were sailing toward the mouth of the Duwamish River (our marina is about 1/2 a mile up river) and there was a barge coming down the river with the tug boat on the other side of the barge from us. I wasn't overly concerned, he appeared to be headed straight out into the bay on a roughly reciprocal course roughly 5-600 yards east of us, but then he turned to port, right onto a collision course with us. We were ghosting along at about 0.8kts and all of a sudden I have a barge bearing down on my port bow, maybe 500 yards or less away and gaining speed (we could hear his engine winding up). We quickly got the OB cranked up and scooted up to WOT to clear his bow. I don't think he knew we were there, although we should have shown up on his radar with our tri-lobe reflector. He couldn't have seen us visually until he made his turn and cleared the barge from his view of us as he was attached to the barge at it's port stern, and we were now on his port bow as he came out of his turn. It wasn't until he was astern of us that I saw the three guys up on the bow of the barge, one obviously with a radio presumably talking to the tug's bridge. We probably cleared his bow by 150-200 yards, maybe a bit more. We didn't hear any chatter on any of the 5 channels I scan through, so maybe they were on UHF instead of VHF.

In the end it was just a bit of excitement, but it was over with fairly quickly and we were in the channel headed to our marina.

All in all a nice day sailing, especially for Rita, which was the whole point.

David
C-250 Mainsheet Editor

Sirius Lepak
1997 C-250 WK TR #271 --Seattle area Port Captain --

Edited by - on

TCurran
Admiral

Members Avatar

USA
588 Posts

Response Posted - 07/31/2011 : 04:37:37

Sounds like a great day! The acceptance to heeling will come. After our first day in the Capri 22, I wasn't allowed to fly the jib for months. I had a 150 roller, as I deployed it the first time (about a 15 knot wind), it deployed rather abruptly, catching me off guard, burying the rail. The wife was sure we were going over the whole time. She eventually came around and now enjoys the higher wind days...Take it slow, Rita will come around.

Edited by - on

DaveR
Master Marine Consultant

Members Avatar

USA
2015 Posts

Response Posted - 07/31/2011 : 06:35:02

Ha, I've done the barge alert before. That'll get the adrenaline going!

Edited by - on

Nautiduck
Master Marine Consultant

Members Avatar

USA
3704 Posts

Response Posted - 07/31/2011 : 07:50:25

Sounds like a great day and a step forward for Rita. She looks happy at the tiller! When it comes time to replace your main I would suggest that you seriously consider shortening the mast and going to a standard rig.

Edited by - on

jerlim
Master Marine Consultant

Members Avatar

USA
1484 Posts

Response Posted - 08/01/2011 : 06:10:51

"...scooted up to WOT to clear his bow..."
what's 'WOT' mean

Edited by - on

Stinkpotter
Master Marine Consultant

Members Avatar

Djibouti
9087 Posts

Response Posted - 08/01/2011 : 06:27:21

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by jerlim
 ...what's 'WOT' mean

<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">Wide-Open Throttle.

Sounds like the guys on the barge were having some fun.

Otherwise, how do you like that TR? Catalina dropped it by about Y2K as I recall... A 135 on the SR mast might be a better all-around combination on the C-250--more power down low.

Edited by - Stinkpotter on 08/01/2011 06:31:55

delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

Members Avatar

USA
4479 Posts

Response Posted - 08/01/2011 : 22:25:47

Knowing what I know now, I'd have opted out of the TR, it's simply too much sail for where we sail. However, I've got two reef points in the main, and a 70% storm jib we can use if necessary. As the summer draws along, the wind dwindles, and September & October are the nicest months of the year, so we've got a fair amount of sailing to do yet, and the conditions get better with time. Who knows, maybe by the end of summer we'll be able to break out our 130?

Edited by - on

Topic

New Topic

Topic Locked

Printer Friendly

Jump To:

Association Forum

Notice: The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ.
The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.