Nice sail on a blustery day that could have gone either way in terms of weather. Lucked out though and had a nice Southerly that carried me from Edmonds down to Port Madison on a single bending tack that kept getting lifted. While the wind started out around 8 knots or so, they faded as I approached Port Madison.

With still a faint breeze, I turned around towards Edmonds and decided to try to fly the 0.6 oz spinnaker tacked off the bow (since I was sailing solo). After taking time to prep, I hoisted it without incident and it filled and helped get boat speed back up. It looked great and handled well despite being tacked at the bow. Tried a gybe and completed it, only to find that the sheets are a bit too short for the outside gybe of an assym.

Soon after the gybe the wind died, and I took the chute down. Decided to motor over to Port Madison the little harbor I'd heard so much about. Its a great place and looks like it will be fund place to take quick weekend cruises. Protected harbor, though I wonder where we'd be able to put ashore for the dogs.

To my disappointment, the engine quit as I just after I turned around to head out of the harbor. Sounded like once again it was starved of fuel. I figured it could be the filter, since I put these in before the new tank and the old tank had quiet a lot of dirt and such. After pulling the filter, I did notice lots of dirt. So I replaced it and the engine ran fine once the air bled through.

Boat did well sailing under autopilot while I worked on the engine. It was 'fun' to work in 2-3 minute shifts - working then watching for traffic, etc.

Had a great sail home as the wind filled in from the SE... yep SE. Was kind of odd direction but made for a great close reach to Edmonds.

Really enjoyed another great day on the water.

A Reward For Work

Spent my early evening working on the boat fastening down the floorboard, after lifting them up and cleaning them and the bilge. Wasn't glamourous work, or stuff likely to notice my many, but its what should be done.

Rewarded myself with a solo sunset and night sail. What a gorgeous night. Nearly cloudless with a mild cool breeze. Sailed by jib alone listening to the 5 star mix on the iPod and working on the log on the notebook in the cockpit. Oh what serenity for a nerd!!

Sometimes its hard to believe that I get to do this anytime I want! Its a really good motivator to get up in the morning and work hard.

Looking forward to getting the light number 1 back from North after the adjustment to get ready for the furler.

First Race With CYC Edmonds

First race on Andiamo today. It was a very light air race and was actually good conditions for learning. The fleet was small with a Hotfoot, Laser 28, a J37 and a San Juan 7.7 (I think). The crew included Sarah, Steve, Lisa, Amber and Will. All pretty new to the sailing scene but eager to learn and compete. Sarah had the helm for the start and most of the race and did a great job. Despite being out of practice and sailing a new boat we got a good start and stayed in touch with the fleet although a bit behind.

We rounded the upwind mark in second to last, but did well on the initial downwind leg picking the right spots and finding wind which allowed us to pass a couple boats (Laser 28, J37). Soon enough the wind died and we gave it all back. I was yearning for a spinnaker, or at least a lighter headsail... but it will come with time.

We finished second to last just behind the Laser and instead of waiting in the lack of wind for a second race we took off to spend the rest of the day looking for wind.

We powered toward Point No Point (already a habit by now) looking for wind while chatting. seal spotting and snacking on the remnants of lunch we started just before finishing the race. Sarah and I are blessed with great friends. Its always so fun to share this part of our lives with them and they are always seem to bring joy to our lives when sailing with us.

Soon enough we were starting to find wind and I was desperate to scratch my spinnaker itch. I started pulling out the gear and Steve and Will helped me rig it. In no time at all I was enlisting Lisa and Amber as foredeck crew talking them through the basics of the pole and a jibe, while Steve and Will were busy attending to the pit and guy. After a quick how to about the hoist we had the spinnaker up a pulling. It looked huge and beautiful - and powerful. Despite light air, we soon saw the log picking up steadily.

Sarah started off at the helm, but soon Steve took over and did a great job learning the basics of steering by reading the sail cues. Steve had a marathon helm session that saw us sail from Point No Point to Richmond Beach in a building breeze. We threw in a few jibes just for practice. As we approached Richmond Beach, I was getting bit nervous as the breeze had built and chances of spin out were a bit higher. So we took the spinnaker down and readied the boat for a nice beat home.

Lisa took the helm to start and did another wonderful job - must run in the family. She was excited to the see the boat so powered up in the breeze and wanted to get the rail in the water - which we did. After awhile, Lisa handed off the helm to Amber to take us home. The is was a second time for Amber and it was evident she remembered much of the first time on the boat.

Amber drove the heck out the boat as the breeze built a bit more. After a few tack in which I acted as Will's drill sergeant of grinding, we were back in Edmonds.

We swiftly put up the boat and headed off for pizza at Pagliacci's.

A totally awesome day!!!.

Sailing to Nowhere (With Some Drama, Of Course...)

This was a fine finish to Labor Day weekend 2006! We headed out in the morning with our friends - Adam & Cheryl and Taylor & Ashley. It was Taylor & Ashley's first time on the boat and they were stoked from the start.

We left the dock with plenty of libations and great food again for a wonderful day of sailing -but of course no wind. But we made best of it - cracked open drinks and headed north toward Admiralty Inlet in hope of finding some wind. Ashley and Taylor were eager to help so we gave them some lessons on terminology relating to sails and lines, and they helped us get the main hoisted. With the main up, everyone settled and pulled out the rigging for the spinnaker we had aboard and got it ready to fly tacked from the bow. Got real interested in the chute after having seeing it out of the bag for the first time when John Wolfe, the Edmonds PHRF handicapper measured it in the morning to provide us with our rating for racing the rest of this year.

After getting things rigged, Ashley, Taylor and Adam teamed up to help get spinnaker hoisted and flying. With Sarah helming we worked together to get this huge chute flying the very little wind we had. It looked great, but was huge. I'm excited to get it flying in more wind and with a pole. After awhile we doused the spinnaker as a team and got ready to head north again under power. However, we got a bit ahead of ourselves leaving a spinnaker sheet over the side. No sooner than Sarah put the engine into gear, I was yelling stop as the spinnaker sheet in my hand began to quick get pulled out as it wrapped around the prop. Hooray for drama!

So we tried to pull the line a bit to see if it would free, but of course it wouldn't we wouldn't be that lucky. What's next? Well this was totally new territory but I'd heard that the best way to do this was a dive. Lucky enough I found an old snorkeling mask in the back of the boat that the previous owner, perhaps even the owner before him, had left on the boat. In just a few minutes, I was prepping to go on my first dive in Puget Sound since I was about 7 years old and apologizing to everyone about getting to see way too much of me on this sail (I did leave the boxers on). A quick fit of the mask, and nice jump off the stern later I was in the water - nothing like the chilly waters of the Sound.

I swam around to the fouled line, refit my mask, asked Adam to hold the fouled line firmly so I could use it as a guide to the prop. A few dives down and back later, I had unwrapped the spinnaker line from the prop without having to cut it - at least got to save a few bucks. Wasn't a fun process, but it was effective and interesting. Haven't seen that perspective on the boat in the water. My only real words after emerging from the water were 'Ah shrinkage' as I looked forward to testing the shower which still should be warm from the engine running earlier.

Engine started fine, ran a bit rough at first but soon it settle and was running like normal. The shower was great and we were soon back to normal headed north for Admiralty. In just a little while were in some wind, and Taylor took the helm after we unfurled the jib and got us sailing well.

We all enjoyed lunch and snacks, traded stories and enjoyed the sun and wind. Watched a few ships go out to sea and many, many cruisers returning from their weekend. Among the various bits of fun were a boogie down show in the cockpit, an unscheduled full moon on the bow, a lesson on how to properly relieve one's self on a sailing vessel, some story telling and much sailing with and without wind. We even saw a few dolphins hunting for their lunch.

After drifting through some tidal ebbs, we found wind south of Possession Point and sailed swiftly home.

It was a great day once again capped off with a crew picture taken after I asked them to 'assume the position'... here's the pics. Oh... we have a great group of friends!!

Cruise To Elliott Bay With Friends

Great day sailing with friends, all first timers on Andiamo. The two couples who joined us were Joel & Trish, friends from our business and Will & Amber, neighbors of friends who we met at a graduation party who've become friends of ours.

So we set out for a day of sailing with our latest crew, tasty sandwiches and snacks and no wind. The water was like glass and with the warm sunny weather we weren't really expecting any real wind soon. With no wind we motored our way down toward Seattle and Elliott Bay to see some of the sights from the water.

After about a hour of powering South, we passed Shilshole Marina then West Point and entered Elliott Bay to get a great view of Seattle from the water. On the way down, we all enjoyed many great conversations about life in Seattle, favorite restaurants and our mutual love of our dogs. To my great disappointment, soon after entering Elliott Bay I heard the motor hiccup for a moment and few moments later the engine actually died. Once again the engine died conveniently - this just in time for us to sail in the wind we found just south of West Point. So we unfurled the jib and handed the helm over to Joel, gave him a few pointers and he was off and sailing us back toward Edmonds.

After troubleshooting the fuel system and trying to bleed the system, which didn't solve the issue. I did one thing I should have done early on, especially when I replaced all the fuel lines - I pulled the fuel pickup. When I blew on the pickup to clear it out several little chunks of gunk just big enough to be one big chunk came out. Perhaps building a small damn in the fuel pickup with crud isn't the best plan for supplying a consistent amount of fuel to the engine. When I reinstalled the pickup, I chanted a good wish for happy engine performance and hoped for the best. Turns out that the engine worked well for the rest of the day. Okay... enough boat drama for the day back to the good stuff.

On the sail back from Elliott Bay, we played musical helm. Joel handed off to Will who handed off to Amber. They all did wonderful jobs with sailing in the widely varying and shifty winds. It was fun to see everyone get accustomed to warm-cold-warm-cold cycle as the wind builds and dies. Trish was bundled up for most of the sail home looking like a fashionable pink Eskimo dressed for California weather. Wish I would have taken a picture.

We all enjoyed great lunches sharing chips, snacks and even some wonderful fancy chocolate caramels topped with sea salt which were great.

Sarah did a great job matching up our couple friends - they both got along so well and seemed to enjoy each other and sailing. We're looking forward to having them out again real soon.

Finished off the day with what I hope is a Andiamo tradition - a crew picture!

Finding The Right Boat

When Sarah and I make a decision we're not ones to just sit patiently and wait for something to happen ... for better or worse we often jump in with both feet and put action to our thoughts. Finding the right boat was no different.

After our initial conversations, I began seriously looking for a boat for us for the first time - not just surfing boat porn for fun (more on BP later...) - but actually earnestly looking for a boat that we'd be happy with for 5 or 6 years. Based on my previous sailing experience on the family boat and those of friends, I figured that we'd be looking for something around 30' with a bit of a performance influence and a reasonable budget.

Performance 30 Fleet
First stop on the serious contender list were the boats of the performance 30 fleet in the Seattle Area which included the Olson 911, Santana 3030, J30 and S2 9.1. Of these boats I really liked the looks of the Olson as well as the Santana - sleek coach roofs and in the Olson's case a nice stern that reflected the racier side of this racer-cruiser. After much discussion on SailingAnarchy.com (SA) with many sailors across the nation as well as locally I found that the 911 and the 3030 were really at the top of my list based on their looks (OK... I'm a bit shallow), their light wind performance and their reasonable accomodations.

(Olson 911S)

Where these boat came up short were the cruising accomodations they had reasonable galley's, enclosed or semi-private heads and salons that were comfortable, however none of them had a shower in the head something that we'd come to appreciate on longer cruises on the folks Lancer 36. In addition there was some concern about finding a good boat sometime in the coming months... so we broadened the search and upped the budget a bit.

Kokopele - a Davidson 29
The next stop was a boat that I had a passion about for several years. I had first seen it 3 or 4 years ago when it was hauled out and for sale in Everett. It's a real racer cruiser with an open stern and great performance in all conditions. I found Kokopele in 48' North classifieds and less than two days later we were climbing aboard her while she was sitting on the hard to CSR Marine on Lake Union. While I fell in love with boat again and was already visualizing crossing the finish line in front of fleets of competitors, I also began to realize that this was not the boat for Sarah and me. It was simply too small, light and tender for both of us to be comfortable in a wide variety of conditions and on longer cruises. So we moved on...

Mind Free - a 1990 C&C 34R
Not long after Kokopele, I saw a C&C 34R in Tacoma that caught my eye. A nice mix of racer and cruiser - a bit sparse on the interior but it hit all the high points on paper - a nice galley, adequate berthing for two couples, a private head with shower and plenty of electronics and equipment (so no big upgrade bills ... OK ... fewer big upgrade bills). A couple days later Sarah and I headed down to Tyee Marina (the first marina my family stayed at when we moved out from Kansas) and stepped aboard to take a look. And so it begins...

Almost There....

So after what seems like a lifetime waiting and wanting for a boat of my own, am I proud to say that Sarah and I are just days away from getting the keys to our first real boat - a 1990 C&C 34R .



Not long after we met I introduced Sarah to sailing on my folk's boat 'Knight-N-Gale', a 36' Lancer sloop that my family has owned since the late 80's. In addition to many daysails and races with my family and friends, Sarah and I enjoyed several great cruises through Puget Sound and the San Juans including our first trip to Sucia Island (one of my favorite cruising destinations) where I proposed almost 4 years ago!


After more than a year away from sailing, we decided about 6 weeks ago that it was time for a boat of our own. It is time for us to rekindle the wonderful times we had sailing on odd days off and cruising over long weekend gazing at gorgeous sunsets and admiring seal, dolphins and all the wonderful Northwest has to offer.



More on the process of finding the right boat later...

For now, just know that I have a great many butterflies in my belly from having signed the final title transfer and loan docs earlier today. Now we wait for the Seller to return to town on Monday and sign his docs - and then we have our first boat together.

Hooray! It's going to long anxious weekend!

JR