In less than I week

I sailed my first Thistle on Wednesday. Oh my! Never sailed such a quick, responsive boat before. Almost no wind, probably 3-4 mph and we just zipped out. Even got to hoist the spinnaker. Wish I had a photo... I learned some new jargon "pinched" means too close to the wind and also I learned more about the tell tales. Which ever one is dancing, turn away from that one. Example: if the inside tell tale is dancing around, fall off the wind...

Got some great advise on Trailer Sailor Bulletin Board on creating a tiller tamer and tiller extension. Went to Fisheries Supply in Seattle. Is it me or do marine supply places treat women condescendingly? I wonder. It felt the same as when I used to go to computer parts places. Anyway, I found my i tems, came home and cut a golf club down to make a tiller extension and got it all ready to go on the boat.
Put my little boat on Craigslist (see photo) and immediately was swamped with emails. Sold it to the first person who looked at it. We went sailing from Leschi and he immediately was hooked. All I had to do was go get the trailer, bring it over to the Seattle side, drive the boat from Leschi to the Stan Sayre boat ramp, pull the boat up onto the trailer and away he would go. HA! First, I took so little gas in the gas can that the motor kept dying on the way. I must have restarted it 100 times....sorry little Seahorse. Then when we got the boat up on the trailer we noticed the left tire a little low. Upon inspection, it turned out the the bearing were COMPLETELY shot and the fellow who bought the boat simply pulled the entire wheel off the trailer. Thankfully he is a mechanic, who lived close by, had tools and even better a GREAT attitude. 3 hours later, two trips to the parts store and a lot of expertise on his part, complete new bearings on the trailer. We finally were able to unstep the mast and -for the last straw-his coupling was different from the trailer's-so we followed him home. So lucky both wheels didn't just completely separate from the trailer en route. He got a bit of a discount and I was extremely grateful. Wow. We came home exhausted and crashed at 3 p.m. (after a quick stop by the new boat to install the tiller extender and tamer and pull the rudder out of the water). What a day.
Lesson learned: bearings will corrode and go bad just sitting there. When they do, the whole wheel will come off. There's a type of cap for the bearings that allows you to grease them each time you use the trailer which keeps the above from happening. NAPA carries trailer bearing kits, Shucks DOES NOT.

Perfect Sailing in Seattle

Today was the best so far. We managed to motor out without mishap and sailed for 3 hours or so. The wind was 5-10 mph according to Yahoo out of the NE. Enough for us to try a few things. We let her go to see what she would do without any sails up. Interestingly, she turned her stern up into the wind and stayed that way. Hmmm. I thought weather helm meant turning the bow up into the wind. However, when we hoisted the sails and then let them and the rudder have it's own way, she turned into the wind and then fell off, then turned up again. I don't know what to make of it.

But, we practiced our MOB drill for the first time. Used an old kiddie vest as our man named "dick". Saved him 3 times! Mo saved him on her first try! Fun to practice.
I managed to get us into the slip by paddling. Want to be able to single hand her so it's important to figure out a way to get her in and out by myself.
A great day on Lake Washington.

Boom, keel bolt, winch photos

Here are a few of the parts:
The boom has an interesting keyholed shaped hole where a boom vang MAY have attached. Don't know. The winch is the braking kind-thank goodness. Which means when you stop turning, it stops turning. Doesn't keep flying around with the weight of the keel. And the end of the boom has a squared hole which supposedly pops out so that you can reef by rolling the mainsail around it. So far: no popping out. I've tried WD40 and penetrating oil, but no dice. One of the many projects.

I'm getting ready to paint the interior. Here's what it looked like when I first saw the boat. Smell? Uggghh. Mold, mildew and gasoline. I've been scraping and cleaning. Will need to take more pictures to show the diff. Really LOOKs bad now, but it's clean and doesn't smell.

even newer with readings I understand

New Weather pixie

Well, I'm going to give it another try at blogging. Why? Because I read a book recently about blogging and was moved by the thought that passion and authority were the most importance necessary characteristics of a "successful" blogger. Success? Well, let's be clear the success I'm seeking here is just to keep a journal sharing my thoughts and experiences about buying a sailboat, learning to take care of it and learning to sail.

To that end, I decided to try this blogging idea again. My last post was nearly 2 years ago and I decided then that I'd rather do than write about doing. However, getting the boat meant doing a lot of research and subsequently reading a lot of sailing blogs and exploring online sailing communities. I'm going to try and pull some of that info together here for myself and whomever else drifts by.
I started really shopping for a sailboat in late April 2008. I finally decided that my little 14' sailboat was not really what I wanted. I wanted to have a boat with a cabin and learn to sail it.
So, ta da! I bought the 1978 Windrose pictured above on May 23, 2008. She's located on Lake Washington down near the Renton Airport...about 10 miles from my house. So far I've spent hours and hours cleaning her up, doing some maintenance such as putting sealant around the ports and just made new sail covers for her. Check out the next photo.