All Hands On Deck   Adventures on land and at sea

I am totally exhausted after a full day of running around, trying to finish provisioning and generally get things in order. At least it was a beautiful sunny day.

Yesterday was a bit of an eye-opening experience. We got our sails from Hood and went for a little test sail/rig tune with the rigger and sail maker. Of course it was blowing 15-20, gusting to 25 or more. We got the main and 125% genoa up even though we know Pirat would be way over powered. It was good to have all that wind to tune the rig but we were flying all over the place and Lee could barely hold onto the helm.

We eventually furled the genoa and set up the solent. That little sail is awesome. I am going to call it the soothing solent. Going from a 125% to 86% headsail did wonders. The real trick was to drop the main. Once we did that Lee said steering became manageable. Pirat was still healed way over and doing about 6 knots upwind.

I think my heart was beating about a million times a minute the whole time. It’s been a while since I’ve sailed in significant wind, especially on my own boat! Various things down below went flying everywhere so now we know what we need to stow better. Lee and I also know that we don’t want to do any sailing in that much wind without a couple of reefs in the main and our solent up for a while. We need to get the hang of the boat on some calm days before tackling serious wind on our own. Either that or we need to take some crew with us on our trip.

I managed to pull my camera out a few times during lulls in the wind. Click for more photos.

Traumatic excursion aside, the new sails look gorgeous. They are very tough and seem to fit perfectly. I’m looking forward to trying the multi-purpose genoa (MPG).

On Wednesday I made a Costco run and filled a cart with more food than I’ve ever bought at one time in my entire life. It didn’t even fill the area we set aside for food under the forward bunk! Just picture giant jars of peanut butter nestled in with a generous supply of Rice Krispie Treats and oatmeal. Today I completed the second stage of provisioning at the regular grocery store (random canned goods, dried beans, grains, potatoes) and tomorrow morning I’ll get perishable stuff and ice.

Lee and I ran a bunch of errands this morning, including to Aquidneck Custom, the boat builder that did our deck reinforcement for the solent stay. Bill generously let us pick though their scrap material to find some foam to cushion the propane tank and life raft. The trimaran they’re building right now looks really spiffy!

Tomorrow we’re heading down Aquidneck Island to Newport. Hopefully we’ll pick up the sail guy there and finish what we didn’t get to with the sails yesterday. We plan to anchor or get a mooring in Newport for the night. On Sunday morning we’re leaving for Block Island! The forecast is for light to moderate breeze from a good direction and the warmest weather yet this spring.

Now it’s time to sleep our last sleep in Pirate Cove.