Shakedowns

A few days after my launch, my buddy and I went aboard 'Piao' to put on the sails.  I learned that day, if one has the choice, it is best not to try to bend sails in 12 knots of wind.  We started in the bow, with the jib, and never got any further.  In fact, we didn't even finish that.  Part of the problem was the wind, but some of the difficulties were attributed to a disagreement we had over which side of the furling forestay contained the jib halyard.  Since my buddy is the previous owner (PO) of the boat, I deferred to his opinion.  But we just could not raise the jib fully up the furler track: it seemed to stop about four or five inches short of the top.  After struggling with it, in the wind, for about thirty minutes, we gave up, brought the sail down, and stowed it in the cabin to await a less windy day.

Afterwards, I went online and looked up the rigging instructions for the model CDI furler on the boat.  It turns out that my buddy had mistaken the "messenger line" for the halyard.  Consequently, the head of the foresail was twisting around to the front side of the furling track as it neared the top, preventing it from going up fully.



When we tried again a few days later, in less wind, we did it my way and the sail ran smoothly up the track to the top of the furler.  No harm, no foul; just happy to have it done.  The mainsail was more straight forward, although I have always had trouble getting the mainsail up to the mark at the top of the mast.  The last few inches are really difficult, and I just cannot figure out why.  More on that in another post.

With the sails rigged, it was time to take 'Piao' out for a couple of "shakedown" runs to see how she handled and what might need tinkering and tweaking.  These trips led me to discover an issue with the sink drain hose.  The new hose I installed is a bit too long, and curves or loops upward before reaching the thru-hull to drain overboard.  

Plumbing Fail: This hose should run more directly, and more level, to the thru-hull drain.

When I use the sink, the water does not exit the boat.  Unable to defy gravity and climb upward to the thru-hull drain, it instead backs up into the sink.  Perhaps next winter I will crawl back down in there and shorten that hose, making it run more level to the thru-hull fitting.  But I am not going to mess around with that while the boat is in the water.  On a somewhat related note, I have discovered that when the boat is heeled over on a port tack, that thru-hull fitting (on the starboard quarter) is submerged and seawater forces its way up into the hose, eventually backing all the way up into the sink.  I will need to install some sort of seacock beneath the sink drain to prevent this.  For now, a $6 plunger from Lowes seems to work just fine in driving any water out of the hose and out through the thru-hull fitting.

By the end of the first week of June, I had taken 'Piao' out four times, three of those trips single-handed, logging roughly 40 nautical miles and 14 hours of sailing time.  On June 4th, Admiral Seawolf joined me for her first sail of the year.  Now in our third season with the sailboat, we have come to an understanding: she would rather be blasting along in a high-speed powerboat, but she will come along in 'Piao' as long as she does not have to do anything.  "I don't want to hold the tiller.  I don't want to hold a rope.  The only thing I want to hold is a beer," she warns me.

Admiral Seawolf

I must admit, however, she has some Portuguese salty dog in her.  She doesn't like the Buzzards Bay chop, but she is not as deterred as our friends with a powerboat who go out infrequently ("There are waves out there!"  Well, yeah).  The Admiral likes sailing close-hauled when there is a fresh breeze on flat water -- a rare combination -- and we can get the boat up to 6 knots or so.  This day she brought along her book, and sat unperturbed on the leeward side as the boat heeled fifteen-degrees.  She only looked up, and wordlessly shifted to the windward side, when the angle of heel increased to twenty degrees.  Then she went back to her book.  

Must have been a good read

That June 4th sail was extra special to me because that day I won my first race!  Heading out from Cromeset Point, where the Weweantic and Wareham Rivers converge into upper Buzzards Bay, we overtook another boat (coming out of Wareham) as we both sailed towards Abiel's Ledge.  The other boat was larger, and carrying full sail (although he was towing a dinghy), while we were sailing under mainsail alone.  To be fair, the other guy probably didn't realize we were racing.  But my friend Linda once said that whenever there are two sailboats in the same place, at the same time, headed in the same direction, there is an implicit race underway, whether it is acknowledged aloud or not.

My opponent, to leeward, dropping behind our port quarter.....

My June 6 jaunt, however, was most exhilarating.  It was a sunny afternoon with temps in the upper 70s.  I was working around the house when the Admiral -- who was stuck working at her desk -- said to me in exasperation, "What are you doing inside?  It is such a nice day!"  That was all I needed.  "Okay, Bye Honey!"  It was a breezy day, with SW winds gusting 24 knots, so I headed out under reefed mainsail only (in part to test how adequately I had rigged the reefing system this time).  I sailed out towards Abiel's Ledge, at the entrance to the Cape Cod Canal.  Unable to point high enough to the wind to clear the breakwater, I had to short tack around a rocky shoal called Dry Ledge.

The boat was averaging 4-5 knots on the starboard tack, but only 2-3 knots on the port tack.  I am not sure why, but this O'Day 23 seems to sail consistently faster on the starboard tack (or maybe it was simply a difference in my sail trim?  or my angle off the wind?).  I also noticed that the leeward shrouds were very loose and wiggling, but Ed had forewarned me of this so I was not overly concerned.  After a couple of hours, as the rig seemed to hold up steadily under the force of the wind, I decided to unfurled half the jib.  Immediately the boat speed bumped up another two knots, and I was making over 6 knots on a starboard tack back out towards the canal approach channel.

I needed to get back by 6:00pm for my stepson's Little League game (which typically run three or more hours), so shortly before 1700 I turned for home, beam reaching on a port tack.  What the hell, I thought.  Let's put out the full jib.  Wow!  The boat was soon bowling along at 7.1 knots, a wet ride with spray and splash, under full jib and reefed main, heeled over 40-degrees, with the starboard toerail in the water!  "Yeeeeeeeee-ha!"

I have learned that keel boats can heel pretty far over and still remain fairly stable.

That's not 'Piao:' that's some guy just showing off....