Where does the time go?

May 30,2022:   It’s one year to the day since I started this blog.  It’s been 9 months since I posted.   (If I thought it was hard to keep up when we were on the trip around the Mitten, it's quadruply so when I'm working full-time. 

 We sailed Twoflower as late as we could push it in the Fall and then laid her up for the winter on the hard.  


Last sail of 2021, October 23

We bought Twoflower with the mast up.  So we really had no idea what to expect when we unstepped her.  There was good and bad.  
Unstepping the Mast:  Oct 30, 2022


Let me just say that the NSSC club members are awesome.  With everything else, we ended up with a cold rainy day when the mast HAD to come down.  Members left the warm inside to help us even though it was the day of the big MSU/UM football game.  We had helped a few other boats unstep[ to try to learn the ropes (lines?), but we still needed technical help, and more muscle was absolutely critical.  

She’s a funny looking power boat. 


It's hard to see in this picture but we used a dinner bowl from the galley to cover the mast collar to protect from rain.  And shrink tape!  Shrink tape and duct tape fix everything.


Blue Lagoon (Harrison Township) did our haul out and brought her to her winter home at the sail club.




So here she sits... but we didn't leave her alone all winter.  Lots of work got done both inside and out between January and May.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Just wear the damn life jacket!

Image
 August 1-10, 2022 Twice in two weeks, Twoflower has come upon a search for a missing boater, both with unhappy endings. The first, on August 1, brought an amazing day sailing to a very somber close.  After a gorgeous high wind day on the lake, winds in the mid to high 20s, gusting to the low 30s, Twoflower sailed into the middle (literally) of a Coast Guard (CG) search. Huron Point and the mouth of the Clinton River are home to Twoflower (North Star Sail Club, NSSC) and is an area where the CG often do drills.  I'd noticed the Macomb Sheriff boat lights near Metro Beach, but again, on the weekend this is all too common.  We are usually tuned in to channel 16 on the radio, and we hadn't heard anything, so we thought little of either the Sheriff presence or the CG. At the time, I was at the helm, and it's quite likely that I was driving like a drunken sailor (although we never drink under sail). We actually joked that they were coming to investigate my driving.  ...
Read more

How Windy?

Image
  I messed up Tuesday. The  forecast  was for 10-20 mph winds, 30% chance of thunderstorms- our typical summer  forecast . I invited my sister & her friend out for a spontaneous evening sail. My sister is a semi experienced boater and needed to get out of the house. Friend has been on boats before, but no real experience. So, I'm basically  single  handing, with a bit of help available. No problem.  The ancient TP5000 tillerpilot picked picked yesterday to stop working. No big deal, we're just going for an easy sail. We  head  out, and I leave the main covered and unroll about 60% of the 150 genny.  This seems perfect in the 15 to 20 mph breeze.  We're sailing nicely- easy. There is a bit of rain coming, so we put up the  canvas .  I didn't see a sign of anything but a little rain, from a pretty low and thin cloud. As the rain approaches, we get hit by a gust, maybe 40mph. I  head  up, expecting the gust to p...
Read more

The Turtle's Whiskers

Image
Lk St Clair It was a perfect day to sail.  The winds were much better than forecast, building to about 20 mph around 5 and then lightening up a bit to 10-15mph.   We had to reef in the strongest winds but we rarely got below hull speed.  It was a good day!  We sailed as far south as we've been in Twoflower on Lake St Clair and then we turned and sailed east all the way into Canadian waters (just barely, as it became legal last week) the view from the peanut gallery (clipped in setting the first reef point) red and green buoys mark the Freighter channel  In our continuing effort to get to know Twoflower and all the rigging that came with, Chuck and I took advantage of excellent conditions to play with the whisker pole once we were headed downwind.  .  We've flown the spinnaker using the whisker pole (we have an asymmetrical spinnaker), but this was the first time using the whisker pole on the Genny.  First, we figured it out together (with autopilo...
Read more