Coamings off, paint coming off

I spent last weekend on Shadow -- slept there on Saturday night and froze halfway to death. I started stripping the deck paint using Franmar's Soy-Strip. So far it's doing well, but I'm using more than I expected, and I'm finding it to work poorly in shade. This latter bit makes sense: the label says it's meant to be used above 50 F, and with an air temp of 56 F, I can see how fiberglass in the shade could be a mite colder.
In the meantime old man Jim helped me take off the teak coamings, which are now sitting in Will's back yard waiting to be sanded and varnished.
In other news, I've serendipitously connected with Kathy Broyles, the daughter of the man who built Shadow Line. I've updated the model page to reflect the information she's given me.

Too much wind!

My friend Patrick and I went down to Shadow for a sail yesterday. We'd had a storm come through late last week (though it didn't dump nearly enough rain), so I was expecting a 24-48 hour cold front to follow. Similar to what had happened the weekend before, when we were out racing on Bullet in 28 kts of wind, wet and miserable, this Saturday was howling as well. But I'd hoped that Sunday would be light air, like the previous Sunday had been. Turns out that was the case up in SB, but down in Oxnard we had NE 20 kt to gusting something fierce winds (according to the Pt Mugu station). The swell, on the other hand, was from the usual northwesterly direction, though admittedly not too bad. Either way, going out with inexperienced crew was not the smartest move on my part. I did have the foresight to put up the blade instead of the genoa right off. We raced downwind to get out the harbor, snuck out on the eastern side, and spent the rest of the time heading west to come back in from the western side. At some point it got gusty enough that I thought it might be best to take the blade down and head in under main, which Patrick did an admirable job of. Ideally we would have reefed and kept on going, but the blade's halyard wasn't nice and tight, so I didn't want to heave to under those conditions in order to reef the main. I was impressed with Patrick's cool, since Shadow's foredeck, with the lifelines sloping down just before they reach the bow pulpit, is not a friendly place sometimes. Anyway, I decided to motor into the channel, since it was dead upwind, and we would have had to take the jib back up to get a tight enough groove to make it (which, may I add, we never have, in that kind of conditions). All in all, interesting, and free of mishaps, but a disappointment.

Distractions

Foredeck babe
Originally uploaded by slampoud

I've been distracted with work and racing, and consequently Shadow hasn't seen enough play lately. She's sitting pretty at CIH and I've started stripping the deck paint in preparation for a paintjob. Though this pic is not from Shadow, but rather a race in Ventura, I thought it belonged here :-)

Back from Pelican

We made it to Pelican and back this weekend. Light winds on the way out, and about 16 kts all the way on the way back. Took us 6 hours to get out and 4 to return. I had a really awesome time this time. The temperatures, both air and water, were more manageable, and I got to use my new wetsuit to go snorkeling a bit, which was really fun. There were tons of sea urchins, very cool anemones, a garibaldi, a dead lobster, some random indescript fish and a mollusk that I couldn't identify. And the kelp and sea weeds were really bright and colorful. I caught a sea urchin, cracked it open and ate some of the uni, so now I can say I've done that! At night we had bioluminescence, which is always beautiful to see. I'd like to dive with that someday, it would be unreal.

On the way out we saw several dolphin pods, but they were totally absorbed in hunting or whatever they were doing and didn't pay attention to us. We also saw a big pack of what I think were Risso's dolphins on the way out and a couple of them on the way back -- I think we startled the second batch. Apparently these guys mostly eat squid, and we saw them on the northern boundary of the southbound traffic zone, so that tells you where the good squid must be!

Dan dropped in a couple lures with no luck, and I dropped in my squid lure at night with no luck. We'll have to work on the right skills for fishing out there...

This time around we had the food and gear prep down a little smoother, so that went fast, and apart from a burn I accidentally gave myself, I don't think we had any mishaps. Oh, I guess we broke the boomvang boom-side attachment on the way back: it was riveted to the boom, and it just came off. Probably corroded half to death. We'll see how to get it back. For the next trip, I'd also like to get a nice compass installed. Following a course on the gps is a little frustrating, and also it has you looking the wrong way.

Didn't take many pictures this time, but here's the link to the album:

islands-05-08-2007

Long absence

As should be obvious from the lack of posting, there has been a lack of sailing. I've been teaching for the past month and a half and the time commitment has been out of this world.
Nevertheless, we went out last Friday and Sunday as we ramp up for our upcoming islands trip this weekend. There's a few chores that need to be worked on, but all in all I think we'll be fine. A notable improvement to the boat has been the addition of a boomvang, which we've quickly nicknamed "turbo", because the boat just seems to speed up when you crank on it. We'll test it quantitatively on the passage to SC island, I'm sure.

Damn dirty anchor dragger!

I was taking a nice Sunday afternoon nap when my cell rang, and, luckily for me, I answered it only to be told that there was another boat hitting mine at the anchorage. I'd put Shadow in the anchorage at noon, this was 4pm and a boat was hitting me?! I was thinking this must be some new guy who just dropped his hook, but when I got out there I realized it was a boat that had been well upwind of me at noon -- I'd made sure of that before picking up my own hook. Long story short, I shortened my rode and waited for reinforcements -- Dan -- to show up, then we moved the anchor further southwest. Obviously, since this guy was upwind of me at noon and downwind of me at 4pm, he must have dragged. There didn't seem to be much damage: the motor had definitely been hit because it was rotated 180 degrees, but apart from that, all seemed well. I let harbor patrol know that I thought the guy was dragging and thanked them several times. Hopefully nothing like that will happen again anytime soon...

Jumping sharks!

Yesterday evening Tijn and I went out for a sail. The idea was that, since heavy winds were expected, we should take advantage of them. The wind was a flukey 5-9kts from the Southeast, which was interesting in itself, because the swell was the usual Southwest, so you could really get going straight uphill. We just sailed back and forth, mostly off East Beach. The notable events of the evening were 6 or 7 sightings of jumping sharks. These guys were maybe 4 feet long and sort of thin, and they were jumping straight up out of the water. They would clear it by about a foot and fall back in. It was really beautiful and very mysterious. What would make a shark do that?