I don’t like to think of sailing as seasonal. Being seasonal is what I think of as differentiating east coast sailors from west coast sailor – 3000 miles, notwithstanding. We keep Caro Babbo in the water 12-months a year and enjoy winter sailing.
This year and last we decamped to Phoenix to work on a house there, making sailing seasonal, even if that was not our intent. Three months prepping a house, only to return to Seattle to spend months prepping the boat, delineates boating seasons as much as I would rather have sailed continuously.
The order for the water maker was placed last week. Once I get word from Jim Kitchen that he has measured the sails, I’ll place the order for the sails and we will have spent most of our capital budget for the year.
I envisioned the water maker on the starboard side of the boat under the bunk, displacing the new water bladder. But as indistinct visions are replaced by reality, I realize that it makes much more sense to place the water maker on the port side where it can draw water through the salt water inlet for the sink and expel the waste water through the sink drain fitting.
The hoses can be short, there is space in the locker under the bunk where we have kept our (way too large) bags of spices… and I should have easy access to the pre filters. It is also forward of, and on the other side of the keel from, the head’s waste through hull.
The water maker is back ordered from Fisheries. Part of the same order is the replacement inverter, which is not a capital expense.
For the sails, we have gone with a loose-footed main with three reefs. Our Isomat boom has a track for sail slides which we will not use. Loose footed, I have always thought, yields a better sail shape. Now we get to find out.*
Reefing the main involves a large cringle (grommet), which is placed on an inverted hook at the gooseneck (which attached the boom to the mast). A line attached to the end of the boom runs through another grommet on the leech (aftmost edge) of the sail, back down though a sheave (pulley) in the end of the boom and forward through the boom to a cam at the gooseneck. Tensioning the line pulls the portion of the sail below the grommet down to the boom shortening (reefing) the sail.
Pulling the line takes a good amount of effort even when there is no wind. Using either of the winches on the mast pulls the line across a sharp edge, and requires the halyard the winch is used for to be released.
Instead, I’ll have a winch mount fabricated on the mast in natural alignment with the reefing line. This just one of the gazillion things to be done before we head off. (The ‘‘to buy’’ list for Caro Babbo has more than 90 items on it.)
*I had lunch with my friend Don Sullivan, ex-owner of a Hinckley Bermuda 40, Glide. He warns that it is the out haul tension that creates the sail shape on a loose-footed sail. There is no sail track to keep the sail in place. He counsels that I will definitely need the winch that I plan to add to the mast for the reefing lines.
As 1/3 partner in this boat (mmm partner means two eh?) well as 1/3 member of this coagulation I firmly believe that without a doubt and without further review , indubitably the present course wherever it takes should continue without review or constraint. As our new fearless leader had shown and illuminated us that plunging forward in spite of the facts and with full use of alternate truths there can be no opposition that cannot be labeled “untrue, salicious lie and vicious reporting.” Remember as Our leader reminds us, “I am the truth and the way and in glorifying ME do you come to the truth!!” ANYONE else is unpatriotic regardless of history!!!
Ergo, I say let us continue in our way to the Everloving sea and shuck this attachment to the land!! Back to our evolutionary start….Back to the sea!!!
As the silent 1/3 of the whatever…I wish you Bon Voyage. I just don’t sail.
Babbo