We had a cold front come through, so after the SCAs were lifted I ventured out on the lake.
Single-handed, I backed out of the slip as normal, and as expected the wind tried to turn me the wrong way, so I used the boat hook to grab a piling and the hook slipped from my fingers into the water.
So I’m pointing the wrong way in the channel with the wind blowing against me, no boat hook, my motor is fixed in place and the tiller is useless under 1kt, epically moving backwards. My momentum is taking me to an empty slip, but there is a neighboring boat so I don’t want to try and stab it in there just in case I have less control than I think I do. Further down there is a block of empty slips, so that is my target. I have one shot since after that is the concrete wall at the end of the channel. After a few unsuccessful attempts at using the motor-tiller combo to right me, I’m now moving nicely, backward, sideways, so put the motor in forward to arrest my backward movement, throw it in neutral then lock the rudder in a position calculated to nose me into one of the empty slips. I run forward and fend off a piling and throw a line around it. Surprisingly I’m now facing the correct way. So a final push off the bow to point to center channel, a dash back to the cockpit and rev up the motor.
Success. 10 slips ahead is my boat hook, floating, as advertised, in the middle of the channel. So I line up and lock the tiller, lean over as I pass and snatch the hook out of the water. I look around and see no one in sight to witness the fiasco. . Ha, another flawless launch.
After that things went great. If I could order a day it would be a day like that. Cool breeze, warm sun. Winds were nice, 8-12, from the northwest mostly; predicted waves of 2-3 feet were really 1 or less.
I had an accidental tack when my jib got backwinded and there was nothing else to do but go with it, then later when going almost DDW a wind shift blew the jib to the other side so I was now going DDW wing on wing. All the other times I tried that I could not sustain it (I have no preventer or whisker pole) and with a nicely pushing wind and full sails I concluded the situation was stable so I enjoyed that for 10 minutes or so.
Rough start but a good day.
Single-handed, I backed out of the slip as normal, and as expected the wind tried to turn me the wrong way, so I used the boat hook to grab a piling and the hook slipped from my fingers into the water.
So I’m pointing the wrong way in the channel with the wind blowing against me, no boat hook, my motor is fixed in place and the tiller is useless under 1kt, epically moving backwards. My momentum is taking me to an empty slip, but there is a neighboring boat so I don’t want to try and stab it in there just in case I have less control than I think I do. Further down there is a block of empty slips, so that is my target. I have one shot since after that is the concrete wall at the end of the channel. After a few unsuccessful attempts at using the motor-tiller combo to right me, I’m now moving nicely, backward, sideways, so put the motor in forward to arrest my backward movement, throw it in neutral then lock the rudder in a position calculated to nose me into one of the empty slips. I run forward and fend off a piling and throw a line around it. Surprisingly I’m now facing the correct way. So a final push off the bow to point to center channel, a dash back to the cockpit and rev up the motor.
Success. 10 slips ahead is my boat hook, floating, as advertised, in the middle of the channel. So I line up and lock the tiller, lean over as I pass and snatch the hook out of the water. I look around and see no one in sight to witness the fiasco. . Ha, another flawless launch.
After that things went great. If I could order a day it would be a day like that. Cool breeze, warm sun. Winds were nice, 8-12, from the northwest mostly; predicted waves of 2-3 feet were really 1 or less.
I had an accidental tack when my jib got backwinded and there was nothing else to do but go with it, then later when going almost DDW a wind shift blew the jib to the other side so I was now going DDW wing on wing. All the other times I tried that I could not sustain it (I have no preventer or whisker pole) and with a nicely pushing wind and full sails I concluded the situation was stable so I enjoyed that for 10 minutes or so.
Rough start but a good day.
