Weather - Partly Sunny with temperature 58-60 degrees, winds out of the SW 12 knots with gusts to 20. Singlehanded day! Pulled out of the slip about 10:30 am after doing some last minute preps - setting up jack lines. Decided that I was going to reef just to be careful. Sailed down Lankford Creek towards the Chester River, having to do a series of tacks since the creek runs basically north/south. Once I got in to the Chester, the winds picked up significantly and some issues came up fairly quickly. The biggest problem was that I had not properly set the softshackle that I use on the Genoa - and the Jib Sheets pulled through and I lost control of the Genoa. Trying to think quickly, I made a turn back up the creek - and released the main sheet so that I was running with just the main - hoping to get up the creek and into the western fork so I could anchor and reattach the sheets to the genoa. I also furled the genoa to keep it from flapping around. At first the plan was working, but then the genoa began to unravel a bit - so I tethered to the jacklines, made my way up to the bow and tried to wrap the genoa up a bit and then used some line to tie it up. This worked and allowed me to get up the creek and into a little alcove where I anchored behind some trees so it was calm. I fixed the connection between the soft shackle and the jib sheets (and did it right this time). In the meantime, I discovered that a slider on the main had broken so I replaced that at the same time. Decided to stay in the back creek and sailed around for a while before heading back to Lankford Bay Marina. A fun and exciting day - certainly glad the first mate (wife) wasn't aboard - as she would not have found it as exciting!
Century Club: Tom Dean
Todays task - getting ready for the first sail - was getting the sails up! Wind was fairly light so I was able (by myself) to get the sails hanked on, raised and then furled and lowered on the boom. Took a while, but I had some time left afterwords to continue preparing the toe rail teak for oiling.
Bubbles has stayed in the water all winter, but I had removed items before Christmas because I knew I wouldn't be sailing for a while. Today was a work day starting to get the boat ready in anticipation of the first sail (weather was indicating a warming trend!) Brought the canvas and sails back to the boat in anticipation of putting them back on. Got the dodger back on, but the winds were to strong to put the sails back on - so I did some work preparing the teak for oiling.
Our sailboat - Bubbles - had at one time been documented, but it had lapsed by the time we purchased her. This past fall/winter, I began the process of re-documenting her and we recently received the documentation from the Coast Guard, so while I was working below on mechanical aspects, my wife was removing our MD registration numbers and decals - as well as removing some "bubble" decals from the transom. It was a full day of work - weather was very nice!