Trying to keep up with this journal, whew. I think of writing so much more than I do. But there have been some milestones in my sailing life so here's an update:
June 28th: Bonnie, Mo and I went sailing. The wind was from the north at about 12 mpg...more than we'd had before. Since the marina sits to the south of the lake, a northerly wind has plenty of time to build as it's coming down the water. As we tried to back out with the motor in reverse, our rudder kept hitting the bottom of the lake or just tangling in the milfoil around the shore. Result: stuck and then being blown southward...toward a row of other boats. We managed to push off them, got into a little deeper water and pulled away. While we were sailing it was glorious. But when we tried to come back to the slip...motor died, rudder stuck and back into the boats just south of our slip we went. VERY anxiety provoking. Some guys on the side started yelling and came to help, unfortunately one had been drinking and was loud and just about sent the crew over the edge. I mostly tried to ignore him while I tried to keep the motor running, back up, get us untangled from an anchor line from one of the boats. One of the most stressed out 5-10 minutes I've had in a long time. Finally we got headed the right way and paddled, and pushed our way back in.
One guy-very composed through all of this-suggested trying to just use the motor to guide and not use the rudder at all in the very tight moorage.
June 30. I HAD to get back out there and try it again. I kept running the incident over in my mind trying to figure out everything that went wrong. So Mo agreed (thankfully) and we went to just get her in and out of the moorage. No rudder, just the motor. Lowered the keel just a turn or two from the entirely raised posititon. It WORKED. Not easy to steer the boat but doable. She sort of wallows around and tips from side to side without the rudder down. But we took her in and out of the slip 4 or 5 times. I was so grateful for the advice. Haven't seen the fellow since to thank him, but I will.
July 7, 8.
I was dinking around on the WWW with the words Seattle, anchorage, moorage, guest moorage, etc. when I discovered that Seward Park has an anchorage spot that is very popular in the summer. The way Bailey Peninsula juts out into Lake WA creates a bay-within a lake. Very sheltered. Andrews Bay is only about 5 miles from my slip and probably 5 miles from home. I hatched a plan to sail up to Seward Park on Monday the 7th and anchor and spend the night and then sail back on Tuesday. The wind was predicted at about 9 mph from the NE for both days. Just exactly where I was heading but i figured it would give me lots of opportunity to tack :)

Indeed. I set sail at 12 noon on Monday and sailed til about 8 p.m. solid. Here's a shot of the northerly approach. I was in heaven the whole time. Didn't eat much, forgot to drink enough water, but loved every minute. Until about 7 p.m. when the winds really picked up and it was blowing about 12 mph. or so. I was supposed to meet Mo and Marie at the Stan Sayre dock for a cup o' joe so I had to dock the boat. Brought the jib down, couldn't tack without it. Had to jibe a few times. Finally brought the mainsail down and slowly motored in. Mo came with coffee and encouragement which was even more important. I'm not sure I could have done it without Mo coming and encouraging me. At the Sayre's dock, I was very nearly ready to just sit there for the evening. But the boat was being pulled by the wave action so violently, I knew I couldn't stay...I rested for a bit and then motored down to the anchorage -only a few hundred few away. I did get to see this homemade paddle wheeler launch









Mo watched from the parking lot at Seward Park til I was secure. Anchoring went easier than I expected. The bay is shallow -only about 30-50 feet so I gave it plenty of scope and she held! I spent the night getting up probably ten times to make sure we were good. Not much sleep but happy. At 7 a.m. the next mooring, I easily raised the anchor and set sail quietly. Sailed for about 5 hours back to the slip, where I was able to dock singlehandedly for the first time. I was so happy/sad the trip was over. My fatigue was huge, but so was my satisfaction. Coming back the next day was just beautiful in every way. Lessons learned: I can do it. It's funny, there was so much time to think, but all I thought about except for fleeting ideas was sailing. How to get the tell tales just right, ways to adjust the tiller, watching the sails fill or luff. I didn't plan my life or think of much of any consequence. Just sailed and watched the birds, the occasional fish, the bank, listened to the boat hum or groan and the water slipping under the hull.

July 11
We went for a late night 6 p.m. sail. Very brisk wind, lots of chop. Even some whitecapping. Didn't get the boat out far enough, so when I cut the motor to to get the rudder on, she blew right into the shallow southern end of the lake, causing many problems. The rudder is a beast of 5' of mahogany so it's hard to manage. Some communication problems between us. Must do a better job of talking through what needs doing. As soon as we got out, we had dinner of a salad with chicken breasts. Big mistake. Mo got immediately nausious-which comes from the Greek word for ship- and almost hurled. We managed to bring it in without mishap but it was a lot of anxiety and struggle. Lessons learned: take her further north when the wind is strong and the waves are bigger. Give yourself more time to get everything under control with plenty of water under her.
July 12
Took Mo's dad out for a sail. We were nervous just because of his age and getting him in and out of the boat. He loved every minute. So did we. Lesson learned: 81 is not too old to go out for a day of sailing.

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.

Hmm

With great fanfare (to myself) I posted a "this is the day" to really start doing this about two weeks ago and here I am. It's a busy life.
Today I just took a friend to the Amtrak station to begin a world-wide tour for a year. We laughed about the rigors of travel on the way down. Once there, there was a kiosk for getting your own ticket with your reservation number and credit card. After several tries, she wound up cancelling her reservation instead, had to get in the line for a station agent, and had to pay double the amount for her new seat in business class... Just the price of doing business when traveling we told ourselves.
That's the thing about traveling and being out of your comfort zone. Decisions, decisions. Do I take this bus or will there be another? Where's the post office? What time does my hostel close? Should I go this way or that? All quite exhausting as well as exilarating.

Today's the day

For some time, I've been watching from the sidelines, reading blogs and digesting what's goin' on. So finally I'm diving in. Just to try out a few things, let's see, how 'bout some links to the Vancouver Folk Festival in Canada last week. An annual event for me. Canada is just so much more, ummm, easy to take than the good ol' US of A. I just had two friends move there and get married. I'm not so much for the angst over the right to 'marriage' here (seems that the legal priviledges of a civil union makes more sense) but they didn't have to fight the right to say "we do".
I'm planning to write some book reviews, discuss some goings-ons, and just see if this is as much fun to do as it is to read.

And what's up with this name? Here are two definitions. U decide.