Saturday Stroll & New Oars

Ponnila and I were planning to head to the boat yard to do a little boat work, but as usual, conditions were too perfect and we opted to take the boat out instead. The winds were perfect with a good breeze out of the west/southwest at 10 knots gusting to 15 knots. This meant a nice sail on beam reach north then around the island with some beating work back south. The only concern were the pop-up thunderstorms that are so common on summer afternoons.

We rigged the boat and got underway. Surprisingly, there was not another boat on the water given it was such a nice day. I let Ponnila skipper out of the dock, however, the gusts were giving her some problems and I took both the main and jib sheets letting her focus on boat steering.

However, things were still a little dicy and I took the helm. We made it up to the island in no time, however, as we tried to make our way between the windward shore of the lake and windward shore of the island, the fully foliaged trees created a massive hole in the wind which left us becalmed and adrift. It was only by the grace of the gentlest of breezes that we made it out of the wind hole and back in some air. The beat back in was good, although a bit shifty.

Afterwards, we had a little time left over to finish work on our new mast-stepping and oar mechanism. One of the major down-sides to sailing at Hoover, is the low clearances of the bridges that separate the south, middle, and north sections of the reservoir. This means that from where you launch (the middle section in our case) is where you stay, as the raised mast cannot fit under the bridge. The only way around this is to step-down the mast, or lower it, while underway. This posses several challenges including what to do with the mast, boom, and sails and how to power the boat without a wind driven mechanism. Fortunately, our boat's mast is secured into a mast-pulpit, or box around the base of the mast, which only allows it to swing aft, or towards the back of the ship, when the tension from the forestay is removed. This at least helps with getting the mast down, however, we still need propulsion. For that, we installed a set of oar locks onto the gunwales of the boat. These can be removed for sailing and installed for rowing. The end results is that the mast can now be easily stepped down by first raising the boom with a topping lift, thereby pulling the sail up and out of the way. The mast can then be lowered by disconnecting the forestay and then lowering the slowly letting out the jib halyard. Hopefully, the boom will stay suspended high enough to allow the oarsman plenty of room to sit under the boom and row the boat. Once under the bridge, tension on the jib halyard should help pull the mast up. The forestay can then be reattached for safety and the boom lowered on the topping lift allowing the sail to catch the wind again. I am looking forward to seeing if this works!