Supplies for your boat are trial and error

We have stayed on the boat now a couple of times and have come to find out quickly what we like and don't like about a few things, though I am sure there are more to follow. I am a camper. I feel that I can eat off of pretty much anything. I can eat off of paper plates and Mark has been known to eat dinner with his family and old girlfriend off of flat rocks found on Wild Horse Island when they realized that they had forgotten the dinnerware. But when it comes to clean up, what you chose so cheaply may become apparent.
I bought some plastic style patio plates at Wal Mart that were so super cheap. Everyone kept screaming "no glass" so I thought this is perfect.. We wash them and the plates have grease clinging to them. It is so gross. And then you hope to wipe it all off when drying them. That's it! They are gone!

Also, I am not going to drink anymore wine from a plastic cup. I visited a friends boat recently and was served some wine. I loved her glasses. Practical but still felt nice drinking wine out of them. They were an acrylic stemless wine glass. Google that and you will have choices. Put the word "sets" after it and you will get more bang for your buck.

We need to stock up on a few more items. A few knives, storage bins, plastic egg crate, and a plastic butter dish that can go into the cooler. I don't like broken eggs and soggy butter. I found a lot of these items at Bed, Bath and Beyond but I am a shopper and will see if I can find them cheaper somewhere. I will keep you posted on what I find.

Until then, happy sailing!!

Shawnae

Painting the stripes and Renaming

Well we got a little ambitious and did some things to the boat that we thought may help her out visibly. The top stripe was a light blue like the bottom paint of the boat. We painted it a royal blue and added another boot stripe above the water line. We used acetone and a razor blade to scrape off the old name. That was time consuming. We had our friend Dan Rinquist make the decals for the name and the home location of our boat. Two coats is what it needed for the stripse. We had to do it in a couple of different days because we have had so much rain. We later had Dan come out and put the names on the boat. This calls for a ceremony. It is unlucky to rename a boat without a ceremony. My friend and co-worker Krista also joined us for the renaming. We read off the things that were required so we didn't make the Poseidon Gods angry. Then you pass around a bottle of champagne to drink and break an unopened bottle over the bow of the boat to christen her. It took 5 times to swing it before the dang bottle would break. It was one thick bottle and was under pressure. Scary thinking the boat could take all of that abuse.

Father's Day Sail

Well, this was an awesome weekend on the water.   Finally, we had some “wind” for New Girl and we got to see just what she could do.  

On Friday night, Rachel Bratz and Jeanna Gamma joined us for an afternoon sail.  We finally got her heeled over a bit and enjoyed a fast run around the backside of Cromwell Island.   Pretty cool.  As the wind died for the evening, we motored back and joined a big Welcome Potluck that they had at the marina.   Very fun, and tons of good food.

 This morning, after a hearty sailors breakfast of Italian sausage and scrambled eggs (gotta keep the crew (Molly Bratz, Andrew Bratz, and Shawnae Ellsworth) happy so they don’t mutiny, ya know), we set off again.  This time, we were really really flying.  Around the back side of Wildhorse Island, the whitecaps were huge and the wind was howling through the rigging and mast.   On a downwind run, we registered 6.97 knots.

 As we rounded the island, we had to do a planned “gybe” – kind of like a downwind tack.  It worked well, but was another white-knuckle moment as the boom comes whipping across.    We then had to beat back into the wind, tacking back and forth, to get back to the marina.  By now, it was really really blowing.  

 Most of the time, we were heeled at about 10 degrees according to the gauge, but when the gusts would hit, it would lay us over to 20 and maybe more.   It was kind of hard to read the gauge for sure because we were busy hanging on!!   Lol.

 Eventually we managed to get back.  All of the water was still on the outside of the hull and the pointy stick was still facing straight up!

 As we were tying up, one of the other sailors said his wind gauge was reading steady at 27 mph.  Yep – no kidding.   And on the way home, we heard there was a small craft advisory on Flathead lake – we concur!!!

 We did learn several very important things.  One: we made a very good decision in picking this particular boat design for us - - it is (obviously) very safe and stable and forgiving, even for rookies.  Two:  we need to learn how and when to reef the mainsail.  It think that would have made for much less scary sailing back in.