Occasional thoughts and deeds of an Engineer
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  • An afternoon of sailing

    Posted on June 7th, 2014 cwmoore No comments

    1977 American 16After a morning of house type work and a short afternoon nap it looked like the wind was up enough for a sail around Pleasant Lake.  The day was bight and clear except for some cumulus typical for our summer season.  The ripples on the lake were not that encouraging however.  Still, we cast off and motored out in the lake to bend the sails and set up the rigging.  As with any new boat, it takes some time for things to become automatic and we tried a new technique – that was a failure – of hoisting the main sail and then trying to feed the boltrope into the boom later.  That definitely does not work so from now on it will be setting up the boom first  [Things would be a lot easier if she had a topping lift to hold up the boom whilst trying to bend the sails].  Perhaps this winters modifications will add the topping lift.  Another lesson learned is that we need a block on the aft end of the boom to reverse directions so as to pull tight the foot of the main sail.  Trying to do this by had just is too hard whilst you are doing two or three other things to get underway. The sail was leisurely and SAM did a good job of tending the tiller while I fiddled with sails and rigging.  We made several trips around the lake, tacking and jibing a lot, sometimes with good speed and sometimes just barely moving.  It was a good day to experiment and one time a lesson was learned to un-sheet the main immediately and not to wait for an excessive heel to take place :).  That little maneuver was pretty dicey and almost capsized us.  Still we had fun and the motor worked well when we needed it.  We will have the skills to really put her through the paces pretty soon.

    Later in the evening, we went to Dairy Queen for a hot fudge/butterscotch sundae.  Man that was good.  It has been some time since I felt comfortable eating ice cream – thank the heavens for Lactose pills to counteract the intolerance to dairy products.  Even now, several hours later, there are no symptoms.

    As I write, the time is growing late for me and it is approaching 2330 hrs so I had better wrap this up and get ready for bed.  All-in-all, it was a great day filled with new adventures and lessons learned.  I look forward to tomorrow and all the new things that make life worth while.  The morrow will be Sunday so we will start out with church and the day will end with a gathering of the Alleshouse clan to meet at Scoops for a reunion with Irene’s son Anthony E. Short and family.  We expect most of the Steuben County Family to be there so it should be a fun event.

    Well, I will close this missive and say good evening to you all.