June 17, 2012 Windy 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 and Jeanna 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, Andrew and Shawnae 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! so that's good.

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.

Mark