I purchased two new cam cleats for the sheets two days previously at the West Marine in Tigard. I had to buy two different colors of the Ronstan brand because that was all they had left, other than one Harken. It was like I told the salesman, "I just want to get on the water." It was a beautiful day in Florence and very windy. Installing the cleats was a snap, the hardest part of it was removing the duck tape I had put there the previous October. I think I had an easier time installing them than removing them in the first place. That doesn't happen very often. I discovered I had a fair amount of water in my bilges, so I trotted off to Fred Meyer to purchase a new bilge pump. While there I ran into my wife, sons and in-laws and decided to take a lunch. When I returned I pumped out the bilges and put the battery on the charger. While doing so I lowered the pop-top as it was catching a lot of wind (it was around 30 knots) and since I was standing up underneath it, I didn't want it to come crashing down on my head. After tidying up I went back to the house and called my friend Steve. I told him to come on down the next day, the boat was fixed and we would do some sailing.
April 23, 2006
Steve arrived at 10:30 and we went down to the marina and took the boat out. The wind was very light. It was a good thing too because we still had problems. The mainsail slugs were sticking really bad, making it nigh impossible to get the main up. As we were taking it down, Steve yelled, 'Something just fell off the boat!" I turned and saw something long and thin disappearing into the water. I freaked out for a moment wondering what it was when I realized it was just a batten, no big deal. So I decided to try to sail with just the working jib. It went up perfect, but it seemed like we had extremely excessive leeway. I all of a sudden realized I had forgotten to lower the centerboard. However, even after lowering it we still couldn't get very close to the wind. I didn't know if it was because of the size of the jib, just sailing under jib alone, or the light winds, or a combination of all those things, but we headed back to the slip. Steve asked me if I had any grease, I looked around and sure enough I had a little tube of marine grease. He applied some to each slug along the mainsail and in a couple of minutes the main was going up and down without a hitch. We went, had some lunch, and went back out. The sailing was ideal for a shakedown cruise. It was warm and sunny, the wind was somewhere between 10 and 20 knots and I had my bud Steve with me. I realized I hadn't really been sailing for almost three years. I was very happy. We stayed out for about an hour and a half and came back.