Adrift at Sea —Dan’s blog on dankim.com

I just got back from a week down at the marina, where I was staying aboard the Pretty Gee. I went down Sunday for several reasons. The first was to get some more sailing in, as the end of the New England sailing season rapidly approaches. I also had some projects I wanted to get a start on, mostly involving the boat’s rigging and layout. I also wanted to use the peace and quiet of my time aboard the Pretty Gee to write more about my late wife Gee, who the boat is named in memory of.

I got the genoa rigged on the furling unit Sunday afternoon. I finished setting up the flag halyards and the radar reflector line. The last thing I got done on Sunday was tightening up the lazyjacks and changing the shackle on the main halyard.

On Monday, I took the Pretty Gee out for a daysail. Even though the winds were very light and fluky, it was a beautiful day to be out on the water. The real purpose of this daysail was to see how my tentative plans for leading lines aft was going to work out.

This winter, I plan on running some of the rigging back to the cockpit, to make handling the boat short-handed simpler. I have most the parts I need for the job. Initially, I plan to lead the reefing lines, the main halyard and the topping lift back to the cockpit. This should allow me to raise, lower or reef the mainsail without having to go forward. The outhaul and spinnaker halyard are the only other two lines I might want led aft.

I plan to add a third winch—identical to the existing genoa sheet winches—to the cabin roof, just forward of the Nicro solar ventilator. While a Lewmar ST40 is a bit overkill for halyards and reefing lines—keeping the three winches the same mean I can carry fewer parts, and still have redundancy for the three winches. The ST40 should make raising the main relatively easy as well.

The main halyard, topping lift and reefing lines are all needed when raising, lowering or reefing the mainsail—so these lines will need to be led aft. The genoa halyard doesn’t really need to be led back, since the genoa is on a roller-furling unit, and the genoa can be reefed or furled from the cockpit, as it is currently setup. Also, on a roller-furled genoa, the halyard requires very little adjustment.

My two options are setting the boat up for either single-line reefing—where the tack and clew of each reef are held down by a single line, or double-line reefing—where the tack and clew for each reef are held down by two separate lines.

While the single-line reefing is simpler and less expensive to implement—it is not as secure a system in my opinion. The double-line reefing is faster to use and more secure, but a bit more expensive to setup. I plan on adding block and webbing strap to each of the leech reefing cringles, to reduce the friction in the line in either case. For the single-line reefing, I’ll have to add a block and webbing strap to each of the luff reefing cringles. For the double-line reefing, I’ll need to add a line for each of the luff reefing cringles, as well as an additional line clutch. Right now, I’m leaning towards the double-line reefing system.

The topping lift and reefing lines will be led to line clutches forward of the third winch. The main halyard and outhaul will probably be led back to a line clutch forward of the starboard genoa sheet winch. All five of these lines will need to be replaced, as the current lines aren’t long enough to reach the cockpit line clutches and winches. Since I’m planning on using a double-line reefing system, I’ll have to add the tack reefing lines.

There will be three double clutches forward of the new winch. One will be the topping lift and a spare. The second pair of line clutches will be the first reef tack and clew lines. The third set of clutches will be the second reef tack and clew lines. The fourth pair of line clutches will probably be in front of the starboard genoa winch, and will have the main halyard and the outhaul.
Tuesday morning, I spent shock treating the fresh water system. Having the boat on the hard for the month of August had allowed some nasty stuff to get a foothold. Dave had dropped off some Clorox bleach on Monday night, and I decided to get the system cleaned up.

I spent most of Wednesday just enjoying the boat and looking for other places that modifications to the current setup might make life and sailing the boat simpler. I also hauled out one of the solar panels and checked the solar panel charging system out.

At first, I thought the system wasn’t working, but after checking the solar panel charging fuse block, I realized that the panels put out far more power than I had initially expected. I blew a 10-amp fuse and then a 15-amp fuse, before putting a 20-amp fuse in for each panel. I’m pretty sure the panels will handle all of the electrical needs for the boat on longer trips next year.

I spent Tuesday and Wednesday evenings working on the book I’m writing. No Greater Love is slowly taking shape. The process of writing about the brief time Gee and I knew each other, and what we went through has been very difficult. In many ways, the writing of the book is the final part of the healing process for me.

Thursday, I went over to meet the new owners of a Laguna 30 that was just put in the water at the marina earlier in the week. Michael had bought the boat to take his wife and two children sailing. With him were his brother Charles, and Charles’ son, James. They were planning on sailing her back to Nova Scotia, where they live, later in the week. I helped them rig the boat and commission her for their trip back to Nova Scotia.

Commissioning the Laguna 30 was an interesting challenge. The boat’s running rigging was fairly unusual, and the boat has some other interesting design choices made by one of the previous owners.

The first problem was the ancient headsail roller-furling system. This was a system that I hadn’t seen before. Unlike most modern headsail roller furling systems, this one doesn’t have a halyard swivel. Instead, the headsail halyard is a thin, 3/16″ line that runs up the furling unit foil and pulls a slug down the port foil grooves. The slug is attached to a wire headsail halyard, which is attached to the genoa, and the wire luff of the genoa rides up the starboard groove. The headsail halyard doesn’t go up to the mast at all.

The thin rope halyard then cleats to the bottom of the foil, just above the continuous-line-furling drum. Most of the load is taken by the wire portion of the genoa halyard, but I still think the 3/16″ line is a bit too small for a headsail halyard. We hoisted the 135% genoa and furled it. As strange as the furling unit was, it appears to work fairly well. However, the small genoa halyard needs to be stored in a bag, so it doesn’t snag as it rotates around the headstay when the headsail is being furled or unfurled.

The next problem was the mainsheet. The Laguna 30 has a cabin top traveler for the mainsheet and uses a mid-boom sheeting setup that is fairly common. I prefer end-boom sheeting, but this wasn’t my boat. I re-reeved the mainsheet to allow the mainsheet to lead fair through the block that make up the five-to-one purchase of the main sheet. I took it out of the line clutch it was run through and put it through the cam cleat on the starboard side of the cabin top. Sheets should never be in line clutches, as it becomes a danger if the mainsheet needs to be released quickly.

The halyards on this boat were already led aft to the cockpit, but to dedicated cockpit winches. The winches on the Laguna 30 seemed to be a bit undersized compared to the Lewmar ST40s on the Pretty Gee. The genoa sheet winches were only 24s, and the halyard winches were only 16s or so. This was a problem when we were trying to get Michael up the mast in a bosun’s chair.

A big part of the problem was the main halyard was recently replaced. The new halyard seems to be too large for the masthead sheave that it passes through. I hope it isn’t a problem for Michael and Charles on their voyage, but it needs to be addressed this winter.

Another common, but simple to remedy, problem was the cockpit winches. The self-tailing winches were setup with the tailing piece set to tail the line overboard—not a great idea and I don’t know what they were thinking. I took the top of the winches apart and rotated the tailpiece 180 degrees—so the lines would fall nicely in to the cockpit. I did much the same for the Pretty Gee’s genoa winches a few weeks ago.

We also drained the anti-freeze from the freshwater system and shock treated it with chlorine bleach. After letting the bleach sit in the system for a few hours, Charles flushed the bleach out and filled the tanks for their trip.

We setup the dodger for the Laguna. It has a small flexible solar panel that mounts on top of it. Unlike the setup I have, the small solar panel isn’t designed to run the boat, but to top the batteries off while at the dock.

The oven and stove on the Laguna is an older non-pressurized Origo alcohol unit. Michael picked up two quarts of denatured alcohol to supplement the half-gallon he had on board. While I’m not a big fan of alcohol stoves, as I think alcohol is a fairly dangerous fuel, and that the pressurized alcohol stoves are particularly dangerous, I’m actually glad the stove wasn’t the CNG unit that was listed in the boat ad for the boat.

CNG is very difficult to purchase, and as a fuel for recreational boating, it really hasn’t caught on. The only real advantage CNG has over propane and butane is that the fuel, mainly methane, is lighter than air and tends not to collect in the bilge—reducing the explosion risk. Alcohol is much easier to find, but I think that propane is simpler to cook with. The only major risk with a non-pressurized alcohol stove is trying to re-fill the alcohol canisters before they’ve fully cooled down.

I added some waypoints to their new-to-them Garmin GPSMap 76. I setup a route that would take them from the marina, down the Acushnet River, up Buzzards Bay and through the Cape Cod Canal. From there, the route would bring them by Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod, and all the way up to Nova Scotia, while keeping them within 50 miles of the coast. Since James was with them, they wanted to stay within reasonable VHF hailing range, just in case any trouble cropped up on the way back home.

The four of us went to Elizabeth’s for dinner. The little ice cream shop that my crew and I usually visited had closed for the season, so no dessert. The food was excellent, as usual.

We headed back to the marina for the night. Thursday night, it poured—raining like the return of Noah. Charles found that the foredeck hatch leaks the hard way. Nothing a bit of duct tape and a garbage bag couldn’t fix. Other than the leaking foredeck hatch, the Laguna is a very dry boat. Before the evening rain, the bilge was completely dry, even after sitting in the water for a few days.

Friday morning was spent provisioning the boat and getting a few last things. Mike got a Walker Bay sailing dinghy, just in case, along with a good chart of Buzzards Bay. I reset the Garmin GPS to the NMEA protocol and showed them how to hook it into the Simrad autopilot. Just before ten, the three of them left for Nova Scotia. I hope to hear from them on Tuesday or Wednesday, which is about how long the trip should take. Fair winds guys.

Friday night was spent catching up on sleep. I had been up for almost thirty-five hours straight. Apparently, I slept through one of the other marina boat owners being an idiot and pulling the fire alarm because he couldn’t get the gate open. He’s since been kicked from the marina. Arion and John won’t put up with people like that disturbing the rest of their marina.

Saturday morning, I got up and had breakfast. I saw that the Heather Dawn had people aboard, and went over to see Rick, who owns her. Rick had made coffee…and I had a cup. They were getting ready to head out for the day. It was a good day for them—almost no wind to speak of—good for powerboats, bad for sailing. After talking to them for about an hour, I headed back to the boat and packed for the trip back to Boston.

I hope to be back on Thursday or Friday.