Slowly but surely we are getting the important things done before we leave for points south. One of the things which have been plaguing us is a leak over the forward bunk. That has to be about the worst place on a boat for a leak... imagine being awoken in the middle of the night by water dripping on you, ugh! Well as of yesterday that demon has been slayed. I had to remove the forward hatch and level the base that it is attached to. In a couple of places I had to add about an eighth of an inch of filler. Then some caulk was applied to underside of the hatch mount. An all night rain followed a couple of days later and our berth remained dry... YEA! A friend, John Bacon, took the following pictures during our second sea trials which took place during the "Out and Back" Race hosted by the St Augustine Yacht Club. We finished last but had a good time and learned a lot about the new rig.
You've discovered by now that as a blogger... I suck.
Fact is we have been getting a lot done and this last Wednesday we came in from
our fifth sea trial aboard Avelinda having finally worked out the sheeting
arrangement for the mainsail which has been plaguing us with poorly setting
lower panels. Following the previous sail Nancy suggested that the only difference
from the mizzen, which was setting perfect, and the main was that we ran the sheet back up
to the end of the boom in order to take it forward and bring it into the front
of the cockpit. The more I thought about it the more it made since that the
problem lay there so I attached a block to the end of the mainsail boom and another
to the lower sheet block and back into the cockpit. Off we went again to sea
and sure enough the problem was resolved. Below you will find some videos of
that last sail were everything was working perfectly, even the auto pilot.
Enjoy!
In the following video taken from the lee side you can see how nice the leech of the mainsail, the forward one, sets now. before the lower 3 panels were completely scalloped and baggie.
In this next video we have turned around about 15 miles offshore and headed back in, we were then able to ease the sheets and the speed jumped up to between 7.5 and 8.5 kts.
Next we are arriving back at the St. Augustine sea buoy while still doing about 8 kts.
Finally here we are inside the inlet and turning into Salt Run where Avelinda is moored.
