Close Hauled on Independence Day

Courtney and I went to Jordan Lake with our friends, Aaron and Laura, to celebrate the Fourth of July. I was expecting it to be a madhouse. Indeed, our normal put-in was closed b/c it had reached capacity. We found a new put-in that may become our new default. I don't know where all the boats were, but it seems there were five trailers in the parking lot for every boat I saw on the water. It didn't seem any different than a normal weekend day on the lake. In any case, it was a great day though nearly everything that could go wrong did. First, the motor quit as soon as we had cast off the busy dock. It was low on fuel, but there were additional problems. Luckily, Aaron is "The Motor Whisperer" and tended to the outboard while I did some evasive sailing maneuvers to clear the dock and boats. Turns out that it was low on gas, flooded and the spark plug gap was too big. After Aaron tended to this it ran like a top... only the prop was slipping. Hmmm.... back into the cockpit came the Tohatsu. When we removed the prop we discovered that the pin that kept the prop in place had sheared. This was most likely related to me wrapping a length of 5/16" Sta-Set around the running prop until the rope had sheared. Could be... but no way to tell for sure ;) Luckily Aaron was able to fashion a new pin out of two small cotter pins... brilliant! Problem solved. We sailed about for a while and drank some "Appalachian Mimosas" (lemonade and champagne... err... sparkling cider... yeah, that's it). The sailing was nice though the wind was variable. I somehow got the new Windex set right on the first try. This helps quite a bit. As you can see from the above picture, we were able to point 32.5 degrees off the wind with the sails trimmed down nicely.

Then, something else bad happened... I'll keep you in suspense until I get pictures this afternoon. It ain't pretty, but everyone is OK thanks to a bit of luck.

Something that is pretty though: my new all rope halyards! I replaced the old wire/rope halyards (must've been originals) with 1/4" Sta-Set. Now the head sail and main sail halyards are color-coded for easier handling. I spliced the old shackled onto the new line as they are quite nice captive pin Schaefers. No sense in spending an additional 50 bucks. I whipped them... whipped 'em good. They're wonderful, if a bit stretchy right now. The initial stretch should be gone shortly though.