Friday, August 23, 2013
Street Kayaking
We're in peak summer heat and storm season. Have not been out sailing in a while but we do get out on the water in kayaks every once in a while. Yesterday we had a rainstorm of biblical intensity. Only lasted for 20 minutes or so but it turned our street into a river. Some kayaking ensued. It amazes me how many people decided to drive down our street even though the flooding was clearly visible from a distance. The Darwin award goes to the driver of the red car in the video. After passing our house she drove/floated off the road into our neighbors yard and got temporarily stuck. Once the water receded a bit, she got free of the mud and proceeded to turn around and come back through our flooded street. The second time around the car had enough and stalled in front of our house. Unbelievable.
Monday, July 22, 2013
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Sailstice at Lake Eustis Sailing Club
We celebrated the Summer Solstice by taking part in the Sailstice event hosted by Lake Eustis Sailing Club. We've been there before and it's a neat place to spend a couple of days. The lake is pretty small and combined with summer Florida weather the sailing is often drifting and roasting or running for your life from thunderstorms. This time it was no different but we got pretty lucky and managed to do a fair bit of sailing. Most of the storms missed us but it's still unnerving and dangerous to be out there with thunderheads all around.
We are at the round blue dot.
That's Rex and Kathy in eyeCod enjoying the storm driven breeze.
Heading back in for shelter.
Everyone back at the docks to wait out the storms.
Carol and Dennis with Duckling.
Duckling and Goat.
Mel and Glenda organized a poker chip run. Bags of poker chips were placed on three buoys out of sight of the club. We were told the general direction of each buoy and had to find them and collect a poker chip from each. This is our track of the run. Dennis got a head start so we just hung back and let him find the chip bags, then we headed straight for them. Yes we are lazy like that.
Glenda discovered blinking LED pool noodles and got everyone to use them as mast lights for a night time sail parade. There wasn't enough wind for a parade but we had a lot of fun bobbing around in the dark trying to guess who was who.
Dennis and Carol emerge from the night.
Sailing at night with no wind is weird as you have no feedback.
A bit of mid lake socializing.
Our sailing performance dropped precipitously when rafted up like this.
Glenda and Mel float by in Q/T.
And then they speed away.
Scott Baumer on Sea Pearl Tri "Kitty B" sails by.
At one point during the weekend we got some perfect wind. I was solo in Goat and was fully powered up but still could sail flat when hiked out. The water was absolutely flat. In these ideal conditions Goat pointed like crazy.
Friday, June 21, 2013
Honest John's Fish Camp
We launched Friday afternoon at Honest John's Fish Camp. Honest John's is a wonderful place on the Indian River Lagoon. Established in 1880 it is still owned by the same family and has a laid back old Florida charm that is becoming hard to find. Since Commodore Munroe built the original Egret in 1886 there's a good chance that he visited Honest John's at some point.
It's a short and very shallow sail from Honest John's to our favorite island, IRL1. We could see bottom most of the time with depths ranging from 2-3ft with deeper channels. As usual on Egret we ignored all navigation aids and just sailed where we pleased. The cove on IRL1 was pretty full of WCTSS boats as we arrived late Friday afternoon.
Folks were chatting and hiding from the sun.
Fleet on the beach. Yes that's a pirate ship at anchor in the cove. No one was home.
Ron Hoddinott admiring Friday's sunset.
Fred and Ted's excellent adventure. We sailed the Egret for a couple of hours Saturday afternoon. The weather was perfect. Note how much helm Fred is having to hold to keep the boat on course.
The water in Indian River Lagoon, near Sebastian inlet, was spectacularly clear.
I wanted to introduce Egret to the Atlantic and the crew was game so we poked out Sebastian inlet for a while.
Pointing and reaching Egret handled the 4ft waves nicely. She tracked well and had a pleasant motion. It was a dead down wind run coming back into the inlet and the waves were piling up a bit against the outgoing tide so the ride got a little uncomfortable. Egret is not fast enough to surf in those conditions and she rolled pretty severely with each passing swell. Not sure what is going on there as the Commodore specifically mentions Egret's ability to run off the wind with full sails up in almost any weather. Either we don't know how to sail the boat (very possible) or the Commodore's idea of a good ride is more than I'm willing to put up with.
Sailing in waves is fun.
Our GPS track from IRL1 out Sebastian inlet. We were not working real hard at sailing the boat, just casually tacking upwind. On one tack we paid attention to the compass and it looked like we were tacking through 100-110 degrees. The track tells the whole story. The best of the tacks is 128 degrees and the worst 146. Average is in the high 130 degree range. Basically same as before the bilge board repairs. Both boards were down. So the boat is still making a ton of leeway. Oh, and we had an outgoing tide helping us along.
Coming back down the channel from Sebastian inlet. Lots of powerboat traffic. Picture by Dennis Marshall.
Picture by Dennis Marshall.
Picture by Dennis Marshall.
Picture by Dennis Marshall.
Saturday night campfire.
Everyone bugged out early on Sunday so we had the cove to ourselves for a little while.
Us and the Evinrude powered pirates.
On the way back to Honest John's.
We anchored near the ramp at Honest John's and dropped the masts. Much nicer out in the breeze then roasting in a parking lot. Stopped for lunch on the way out at the Sebastian Beach Inn. This is the beach in front of the restaurant. There are quite a few houses along A1A where the owners have to stare at this sort of thing on a daily basis.
More pics from the trip at the West Coast Trailer Sailor's website.
Friday, June 14, 2013
End of Bilge Board Saga ..... For Now
Boards are done and installed in the boat. As an experiment, I decided to foil shape just one board and leave the other flat and square edged. The plan is to record a bunch of GPS tracks of Egret's tacking angles using each board and compare the results. It will be interesting to see if there is any measurable advantage to the shaped board.
Trailing edge epoxy pour. Since the volume was pretty high I filled the trailing edges in two pours to prevent a runaway exothermal disaster. Even so, the epoxy was too hot to touch.
The pivot pin and pennant holes got filled and re-drilled.
In the spirit of gettin'er done, the board pivots remain as originally designed with new 3/4" bolts. This is what $40 of 316 SS looks like.
I used ply templates to get a consistent shape to the leading and trailing edges. The templates are based on the shapes I used when building the Goat Island Skiff. Since water flows diagonally across the boards I marked off guide lines and aligned the template parallel to the water flow, in theory...
After laying out appropriate guidelines I used the plunge router and fence to cut progressively deeper grooves in the leading edge. These grooves act as guides for the belt sander.
When the grooves disappear you are done sanding. Takes a bit of finesse with the 36grit belt. Minor imperfections were filled with a final skim coat of thickened epoxy.
Same deal on the trailing edge except the guide grooves are further apart.
Almost there.
Not too shabby.
Done except for final skim coat.
Comparison of shaped and unshaped boards just before installation. The leading edges are facing up.
Looking down on the trailing edges.
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