[quote=pirateboy27]
Hey thanks to everybody that has been helping this idiot, either directly, or with posted questions that I also needed to know the answers to. It was all worth it!
Now that everything has come up rosy, I'll tell my tale of MY first sail with my new-to-me boat. Oh, and my first attempts. I wanted to do inland, since there was no way for me to tell how long it had been since the thing had seen water...the poor guy I got it from never sailed it. I went over everything very carefully. It took me quite a bit of adjusting and tweaking before I was satisfied it was worth a try.
First was Clear Lake: No swimming for the girls with me that wanted to go swimming, no place for the girls that wanted to skim-board, and no beach to pull the boat up on to pick up and drop off girls. Did I mention it was just me and a bunch of girls? How does anyone sail this place? We hit Galveston and the boat stayed on the trailer.
So, someone mentions Lake Livingston. It looks great, with state parks and I?d heard of grassy shores where swimming is OK. It?s a drive, but here we go. I paid my $9.00 only to discover that there is a concrete wall all the way around the park and the swimming area is a ways from the boat ramp. AARRRRGG. To top it all off, the boat ramp and loading area was concrete too. It took the wife and 2 girls to hold the boat away while I raised the main. I figured I could get the jib up after we found a grassy spot somewhere. Got the main up, the ladies jumped on, and away we sailed. For about 300 yards anyways. About that time I decided to get a good pull on the mainsheet. The forestay turnbuckle (the BOLT, not the cable) parted with a bang, and the mast came down between us all. No one was injured, but all were a little freaked out.
No boats were around to help, so I sort of held the sail up sideways to get us some wind. It worked but the mast had fouled the tiller so we went in a circle, just a little closer to shore. Then the wind shifted and the sail blew on top of me, leaving 3 girls in bikinis perched on the tramp. In no time, we had 2 motor boats eager to help. I picked the one with the oldest Captain, thanked the other, and we were motored to the pier. The shame!
Somewhere on one of the older posts, I read ?buy new shrouds and forestay, just to be safe.? Lesson learned: I ordered one of everything that holds the mast up from The Sailboat Shop in Austin, and headed to Surfside Beach! Things went a whole lot better from then on. I met Collin, a Texas City Dike Yacht Club big-wig, his crew Jonathon, and a great guy named Curt, there with his daughter Karen. I had just guys with me so I didn?t care how bad it went, but nothing bad happened. The boat is different from the NACRA 5.2 and the Hobie 14 I sailed before (duh) so it?s going to be a learning curve, but the best sail of the weekend was the last one; with big Curt on the wire we did a ?Screaming Beam? and flew a hull for at least fifty yards. At no time did the lee bow show any sign of plowing under, unlike the NACRA which threatened me with a pitch-pole any time I started haulin.
Look for me this weekend at Surfside again. I?ll have a bunch of drunk Englishmen with me---the England / USA soccer game is on 9:00 am Saturday.
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