Sailing Yet?...........Yep

After a very restless night the wind had calmed and the water intake had been reduced on the leaking stuffing box.  As soon as the girls left the boat to get breakfast at the club house I was upside down in the starboard lazzerette with two pipe wrenches.  After much struggle and wriggling around I was able to get into a position that gave me enough leverage to break free the locking nut on the stuffing box.  I tightened down the box ring and the leak stopped.  The rudder still moved freely so I tightened up the locking nut and congratulated myself.  Now all I had to do was extricate myself from this position.  I should have brought the cell phone down here with me in case this didn't go well. It took a while and I could tell I was going to have some bruises in the morning.  As I got out and stood up the girls came up to the boat in a panic wanting to know where all the blood on my head was coming from.  "Beats me, I just got here myself."  It appears I cut my head on the fiberglass while upside down.  No biggie, I had just single handily saved my boat from sinking.  It is appropriate that a little blood be shed during such an occasion.

Time to sail.  This first trip out would be without the dog.  An extra body one the first outing would be more than I could handle.  Luckily a club member volunteered to watch him for a couple hours.  The most stressful part of any sail is the leaving or returning to the slip.  I reviewed the operation carefully with my crew and when everyone was ready we started the motor and back out of the slip.  We motored away from the docks and entered the creek proper heading out to the Nuese River.  The winds were light, forecasted to be 5-10 kts., SW.  We motor sailed out to the main river giving an education along the way about the navigational aids and markers.  What the colors meant, numbers, etc.   We made it out t to the river and shut off the motor in a light breeze.  We were finally SAILING!




Of course the wind died five minutes later but we were out there.  The wind filled back in about 30 minutes later and we had some good upwind sailing. We topped out at 5.4 kts boat speed.  The First Mate was excited and held up her fingers to convey the top speed.  Being sensitive to our dog watcher we did not go too far up river and turned to run downwind back to the club.  The First Mate took over the tiller and did a good job holding here on a relative course and helped by identifying the markers with her super human 10 year old eyes.  We made it back to the entrance and began to douse the sails.  the main hung up at the top on the 2nd or third clip on the track.  A little jerking and pulling until it broke loose.  A big sigh of relief.  We cleaned up the sails and lines and motored back into the harbor   My first re-entry to the slip was not pretty.  A little too hot.  Our dog watcher was there to help and hold us off while I checked the engine at reverse full.  That worked and we stopped.  The fault was mine.  I was too busy trying to grab the long spring lines to hand off and did not realize our drift speed was still high. I plan on shorter spring lines to make this job easier for all concerned.  Maiden sailing voyage successful.  I had an extra ration of Grog that night.