Around the Island

The Conanicut Yacht Club Around the Island Race is an annual tradition for Floating Point (my old Frers 40). I didn't have any desire to race it in Salty Beach, but I figured I would take the opportunity to do a little single-handing and hopefully nab some photos of Floating Point and others racing.

My initial plan was to leave early and sail around Beavertail at the south end of Conanicut Island (aka Jamestown) to hopefully capture the boats setting spinnakers after rounding the usual windward mark. I was far too late leaving though, so I took my dad's suggestion and drove to Beavertail State Park. Since I now had plenty of time to wait for the boats, I thought to stop at Fort Wetherill on the way to get some upwind photos. I'm glad I did as my favorite picture of the bunch was from that stop!

I watched as Floating Point hoisted the very-recognizable blue and red spinnaker, but it apparently came out of the bag early and ripped near the upper part of the leech. Thankfully, my friend Bill who is part of the crew is good at patching such things. After they passed me at Beavertail, I headed for Newport to go out on Salty Beach to attempt some photos of the finish and practice a little solo-sailing.

Unfortunately, in the swarm of boats racing, I didn't see Floating Point until after they passed me. It turns out they tried heading east, which proved to be a mistake, but I managed a single photo. Also got a couple shots of classics returning to the harbor after the IYRS Newport Classic Yacht Regatta.

I sometime plan to experiment with sheet-to-tiller steering, but it was too congested in the bay to mess around with that this time. I used two short lines, with one end attached to each forward post of the stern pulpit, and a loop tied with a rolling hitch at the other so that the length could be adjusted. This allowed me to loop both lines around the tiller and adjusted to center, or slightly above or below if desired. Eventually, I plan to do a DIY tiller-lock, inspired by this post from Stingy Sailor, though I have my own idea for a slightly different design I plan to try. My simple looped lines work well enough in the meantime to allow me to go forward and hoist or drop the jib, or tend other things.







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Keel Hauled

Image
Ever since launching and discovering the keel wouldn't lower all the way, I've been anxious to get the keel out of the boat. With it safely on the hard for the winter, and the weather still fairly warm, it was time. First, I jacked up the trailer and put it on jack stands to prevent sagging as I climbed aboard. Next, I used a bottle jack to lift the front of the boat and placed 4x4 blocks on top of the forward part of the bunks to raise the boat 4" off the trailer. I used a hi-lift jack to lift the transom and do the same at the aft end of the bunks. This was to allow enough clearance between the trailer and boat to get the keel out of the partial trunk of the boat. I put a jack gently under the forward edge of the keel, just barely touching, in an effort to remove load from the pivot bolt. Next, I climbed aboard, used a putty knife to scrape off the Stay Afloat wax I had sealed the pivot bolt with, and removed the nut with a socket and ratchet. A couple whacks with a hamm...
Read more

Chipping Away

Image
 It has been much too long since I posted, but I have been busy. First off, my fiancee and I got married over the winter! While that occupied much of my time, I did start on the keel work some weeks back also. I used a furniture dolly and rolling car jack to drag the keel over near my basement for easier access to my tools and compressor. Then came the hard part, grinding and chipping the rust off. I had gotten an estimate of $700 for sandblasting, and that was if I dropped it off and picked it up, but it was just not in the budget. I opted to try my angle grinder with various wheels: metal grinding disc, flap wheel, stripping disc. All worked to varying degrees, but I realized some of the rust was in layers, so I tried a hammer and cold-chisel. It worked well! Then I remembered I had a compressor and pneumatic chisel. Even better! Still, it took at least six hours of exhausting, messy work to get the keel down to solid cast iron. I finished off with a wire wheel on the angle grind...
Read more

M5 Loop

Image
My aunt came to visit from Missouri so I took her and my cousin's family out for a little harbor sail. Unfortunately, there was virtually no breeze so we motored. They all wanted to check out the sailing yacht  M5 , the largest single-masted sailing yacht in the world, so we did a loop around for a few photos, then returned to the inner harbor for the usual harbor tour loop. The fog came in thick and fast so we had to cut that short, but everyone said they really enjoyed seeing M5 . The first photo is my own, the rest were taken by my aunt.
Read more