TIM WEBB wrote:Good on ya DM! Yeah, we've still got remnants of this front that came through, and the winds are pretty fluky down here as well ...
Ain't it great when you get *your* boat setup the way *you* like it, and the learning curve just starts to go through the roof, er, deck? ;-P
Yep, it was in the low 30's degrees at night and 50's-60's during day over the weekend. Then today, it was 80 something degrees again. I now have a cold as well. That seemed to happen overnight, lol. Florida weather...
The boat would sail before, but now it is so much easier to adjust, and more importantly take advantage of the wind speed changes. Really fun to sail now! I remember cruising and then the puff coming on, and the boat would go over a bit, but not enough to worry, as you could ease the main ever so gently when need be, and then sheet back in... she would start increasing speed quickly, and then when things would start level out a bit I would pull the mainsheet back in some more, and it would power up more and start to "haul tail"... we were skipping along through the water once we really got it trimmed in good and all the tattle tails were flowing nicely... Slamming into the waves and causing the water to spray. We were sheeted in enough in a heavy puff at one point, that the tiller was trying to run away, had to keep a fair amount of pressure on it to keep from trying to round up. But sheeted in enough, and forcing the tiller slightly to windward in the gusty winds made for some pretty fast sailing. Or at least the fastest I have done
The boat's controls seemed a little chaotic at this point, but the adrenaline was was there to offset that as a concern.
Before, it would be like... "oh crap there is a gust", and go down into the boat and let out the mainsheet, and the boat would stop excessively healing, but it would also stall quite a bit because the mainsheet would get let out to far because no ratchets or you don't really know how to judge how far to let it out because you cannot make an easy determination because you cannot adjust from sitting position you want to be in on the rail of the boat because the mainsheet is auto-cleating in the downward position. Basically, the "Marine Nitro" would come, and you would lose it and have to start the whole shifting process again from scratch in 1st gear.
The mainsheet setup is A++ in my opinion
The other mods make things a lot more convenient...