Re: Fw: [Cal_Boats] Nothing to do w sailing

Chris...yuk...square waves?...I hate the sound of Fiberglas cracking and splatting and pounding and shuddering thru steep waves. Doesn't do much for me delaminated bulkheads. Not one bit. Tuesday nite we had 14 knots of wind, big waves, but it had been blowing harder earlier so by our start at 6 PM we had wonderful steep but round top waves, fun to slosh over but my delaminted spinal lumbar disks wouldn't agree with my brain cells on that point. OUch.....ouch....ouch...Oh the joys of my golden years...NOT! Thought about a bigger boat riding better, but you should have seen Joe Cowan's Cal 36, a certified blue water racer, leaping out of the waves like a grow steroid maddened porpoise. They must have had one hell of a circus ride! Jerry, Shpritz, the little whale boat mini-ocean racer that mostly rides like a Cadillac. -------------------------------------------- On Thu, 7/21/16, ccampbell cc… [at] lsnm.org [Cal_Boats] <Ca… [at] yahoogroups.com> wrote: Subject: Re: Fw: [Cal_Boats] Nothing to do w sailing To: Ca… [at] yahoogroups.com, "Gerald Sobel" <so… [at] yahoo.com> Date: Thursday, July 21, 2016, 6:47 AM On 7/20/2016 7:55 PM, Gerald Sobel so… [at] yahoo.com [Cal_Boats] wrote: On the other hand.... once you get the hang of sailing in ideal sailing conditions, start pushing the envelope at both ends. Sooner or later you WIILL be out in "ideal" weather conditions and the weather is going to turn scary-nasty, or go fizzle-light. It's better to sail in rough conditions pre-prepard for it, ideally with crew that has such experience, or, leaving the dock with the mainsail reefed in advanced, so you won't be scared sheetless when that happens. Around here we have a couple big gaff schooners, and their size, multiple sail plan, and low center of effort mean that they can be out when it's blowing like hell. We call it "schooner weather." It's fairly common to have three boats out on the bay--two schooners, and my Cal 20. My other boat, on the other hand, is on a larger but shallower body of water, and is a lot more work to handle alone when the wind picks up too much. We have the famous Great Lakes square waves. And unlike the Cal 20 that lives on a mooring, that one lives in a marina about 2 mi. up a dredged shipping channel. As others have observed, it's not the wind and waves on open water that scare us, it's the hard stuff around the edges. If it's going to be blowing like hell there, I tend not to go out. Just too much work single-handed, or even double-handed unless the crew is skilled. But the real weather issue for me is thunderstorms. I just prefer not to push my luck with large voltages. It can be done when there's no choice. Twice on the schooner I've found myself holding the large iron wheel at night while the lightning flash and the thunder are simultaneous. You hold on and do what has to be done. But I don't intentionally run my little boats out into a large flat expanse of water with a grounded stick poking up into the clouds to play Ben Franklin. I learned to single-hand by necessity. For those of us who like sailing, it can be hard to scrounge up a crew. People are busy shopping or cutting the grass or watching TV. I figured out that I had two choices--get pissed off because nobody else can go out, or learn to do it myself. Light air isn't a problem, but none is. Night before last, the wind went to zero as I approached the mooring field. It was actually convenient because I dropped the sails and bagged and furled them just sitting there not moving. Usually I can make the boat go enough to reach my mooring. Not that night. It called for old stinky, the reliable but smoky old outboard. Last night was perfect. The wind declined a bit as the sun was getting ready to set so I could sail gracefully onto the mooring (well, took two tries). The boat sat there lookin' pretty as the sun set and I rowed away, smiling. Chris Campbell