Out Single handing... sort off.

July 28th. Sailing night. Well not really. Tonight I did manage to get away from the dock. 1st time away and back alone. I have to admit I'm loving the way this boat handles. It really is a breeze. My little one is now 4 months old and has started to scoot around a little and is very close to being able to roll over. So the time has come to find a more secure location for him. I started doing some measuring below deck for the instillation of a full v-berth. After getting the measurements I decided hey I'm here the storms they were talking about on the radio don't seem to be around why not head out. Well motor running lines untied I slid out of the dock about 8 pm. and hit the mouth of the river around 8:30. To the south the big black clouds appeared. So I turned around and went back in hit the dock 9ish. No great sailing accomplished but any day on down on the boat is better than sitting around the house watching TV. P.S. photo's of V-beth coming soon. BB has the camera.

A no wind night on the Chaser 29

BB and I have agreed that one night a week can be dedicated as sailing night. So Tuesday night is the night we've picked. July 21st was the first official sailing night. The weather was looking rather gloomy. The sky in the north was dark dark gray with wisps of white. We met at the dock this evening and hung out for a little while before deciding to give it a try. Good thing we did by the time we made it to the river mouth the sky was brightening up. Once out on the lake we Set the main sail. There was absolutely no wind. The Vane on the top of the mast just spun back and forth. Even though we weren't going any where quickly spirits were high. We decided given the current state of the atmosphere it was a good time to try out the spinnaker for the first time.
My boat is equipped with a 1.6 oz and .5 oz spinnaker. Obviously the .5 oz was the right choice for the night unfortunately the 1.6 oz was in the spinnaker sock. So we decided to use the 1.6 and the sock instead of doing a deck launch of the .5 ouncer. It took us a while to run all the rigging and set up the pole but like I said we weren't going anywhere quick and being the first launch of a spinnaker I've done in several years It was time well spent sorting and making sure all the sheets/guys and other lines were going to the right place. The Yellow red and white sail slipped out of the sock like a dream. It took only a few seconds to fill and adjust the pole to the correct position. Through the rest of the evening the wind filled the chute and then dropped it as the wind died away. We even did one ugly dip pole jibe just to see if we could. This night was proof enough that even on a day with no wind it is easily worth going out on the lake and tinkering around....

Around the Bay

Today BB held a Baby Shower at the house. It was a nice day but pretty rough out on the lake so down to the boat and puttered around the bay. It was a good day.

Chaser 29 Discusion

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If you have a Chaser 29 I would love to hear from you. Questions on rigging? Hulls? Anything post it in the comment area here. I might not have the answer but who knows I might be able to tell you how I've worked through my problems.

A web resource for the Chaser 29 sailboat

Don't ask me I have given up. Google will probably never index my web site. They seem the think it is not in English.


http://sites.google.com/site/chaser29site/

Hanging out on the boat.

Hey why not. Tower Marine is a nice place for lunch and we are loving it down here on the boat. We've been out sailing every weekend in June so far. Can't beat that. Myles is getting his sea legs to. Can't wait till he learns to walk. =-)

The Voyage home Day 2

The wind was coming from on shore the East. The motor fired right up it was a good day to sail but we had a graduation party to get to in the afternoon. So we motored from Grand Haven to Saugatuck. The boat ran all the way down the coast but it was apparent some thing was not right.

We found that the #4 cylinder had 2 lbs compression. After a bit of tinkering and a significant amount of oil I was able to free up the stuck exhaust valve. Now I have 100 lbs of compression and the Atomic 4 is running strong. Guess you can expect to run into a few kinks on a new boat especially if it has sat for a year. Any ways I'm glad we have not picked a name for the boat just yet. Accord is supposed to come of the back some day. If you have a suggestion for a name leave it in the comments section. Were still looking for a good name.