How beautiful is our own backyard?

We are extremely fortunate to live where we do. Flathead lake is biggest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi. It is 197 square miles and has 160 miles of shoreline. It also has many islands for us to explore. We have had a lot of fun learning and racing our new boat. Sunsets are beautiful.

"high" pic!

Here is a picture from the top of the mast!!!  neat perspective.

Swab the decks...er... paint!

Baby blue on a boat screams 1960-70. And even though our boat is 1972, it doesn't mean that we want her to look like that. Also the blue in the sunlight is a scorcher on barefeet. She needs a facelift. So, facelift we did. We went shopping for some deck paint. Mark had done some reading in "Practical Sailor" and found an article that graded the different types of non-skid deck paint. The one that was rated amongst the highest was Interdek paint. We ordered our 2 cans of grey online at westmarine.com. Once received I looked at the paint and decided it looked to be too dark. Of course Mark was not thrilled with this as it meant, more shopping and a return. I couldn't imagine putting 2 cans of grey on top of blue and getting something semi light. We decide on keeping one grey and getting a can of white to mix with it. The results were wonderful. We pressure washed the decks and then motored the boat over to Skeeko Bay on Flathead Lake. We taped off all of the areas that needed to be painted (previously baby blue) and then turned in for the night.

The nest morning we awoke, had our coffee and breakfast and got to work. I started by painting with about a 1 1/2" brush. The paint went on pretty easily but dried very quickly. It was almost gummy. The temperature that day was going to be 90 degrees so we had better work quickly. We started at 10:30am and finished at about 2:30. We spent the rest of the day swimming and admiring all of the other boats docked in the bay. Funny thing is, you look and want (oh they have such a better swim ladder, oh look at that solar panel, you get the idea).

We stayed the night in the bay again to let the paint dry before walking on it.

We awoke the following morning, to pick up co-worker and friend Krista, and set sail for a fun filled day. The paint was dry but would have been better left alone for another day. We had a lot of swimming.We made New Girl...on the dock to be           Pretty Girl...on the dock!



Left is blue ... right is grey.



End of Summer.

Well, we're coming up on the end of summer here.  We've sailed the daylights out of New Girl all summer.   We have learned a ton . . .  but still feel like there is a lot more to do.   

We have also made lots of little (and big) changes to the boat.   In a later post, we'll add some pictures showing you all the upgrades and improvements.

~mark

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

DIY Cushions for the cockpit

We have sailed her now a few times and we are loving our adventures. We are also spending quite a bit of time doing repairs and fixing her up to make our stay on board as comfortable as possible. This week I decided that we should have some cockpit cushions. So I went shopping and came up with a brainstorm of what I can make at home. I purchased 2 camping ground pads. They are made out of the swimming noodle styrofoam. Even if they get wet they will not absorb water. I also purchased a vinyl material to cover it with. It will be water, stain and dirt resistant. I can just wipe them off with a cloth. The down side is that they are navy blue. If I had my choice of colors in the store I probably would have gone with a light grey. The navy will get hot in the sun so I am guessing that we will have our towels on them. But in the heat it will be nice to be able to drench the towels in the lake and sit on them on the pads. No worries of the cushions getting wet. I will send a picture later as well once we get them on the boat.

Shawnae

Found the dishes

I know this seems like a silly post, and Mark laughed at me saying I was cute, but having the amentities that you want to make you feel comfortable while on board is valuable. I finally found the dishes that work so well. In my last postI mentioned the first dishes that I had gotten. Mistake. Here is the link to what we got.
http://www.target.com/p/blue-swirl-12-pc-dinnerware-set/-/A-12062639#reviews-and-ratings.
I love them. They are a hard, thick melamine and look like stoneware. We also got some nice hard clear plastic glasses to go with them.

I hope this helps.

Shawnae