So here is the fun part. First sail, I went to a lake that I knew there would be wind on that weekend. I invited 2 of my friends who had never been on a sail boat to join. I arrived about 4 hours before they were able to get there and started sorting through all the rigging tying to figure out what was what. Having never rigged anything but a laser and the 14, I considered my self an expert and didn't bother downloading the manual or anything before I entered the no service zone. The lines were all pretty frayed and just old. I eventually figured what was what and where it went. I even solo raised the mast. (I recorded a video of the triumph incase all went wrong and it would just make a good youtube vid). The other fellas showed up to the rigged boat and a nice 8kt breeze. It was late September and despite warning them that they were probably going to get wet,the two of them insisted on wearing jeans because it was cold out side. Whatever. So when we pushed off the wind picked up to around 12 knots. The two of them out on trap while I was at the helm. Over the coarse of our maiden tack, the wind picked up and was gusting at... more then I have ever sailed in. We were screaming across the lake, the three of us holding on and trying not to sh*& our pants. We were about 200m from the shore line and and we hit a sand bar.
So lesson one is know the body of water you are sailing on. Didn't even feel it. The boat just kinda lost steering a bit and there were white chunks of fibre glass floating away behind us. It took us about 3 hours and finally a pull from ironically a mastercraft X-star, boat I used to wakeboard behind. The rudder was barley holding on and the starboard dagger was cut in half and left at sea.. or lake.
Lesson 2, when you buy a boat, check out murrays online store and see what replacement value is on parts. You will quickly realized that breaking boat parts, especially if they are shinny is not something you want to do. We managed to fix the rudder using a piece of 1"X 3/16" flat bar I for some reason had in my truck. we used a fire to heat it up and bend it to the contour of what the missing chunk was. This held up for about 6 months then I hit a crab trap and finally learned about the magic of west systems.
I ended up buying a delaminated dagger board off ebay for a deal at $300, I used bondo, resin and gelcoat to get it back into the shape it should be. Not an easy task, still no regrets on the money I saved. A side note. I have never used any of these products before. Youtube is great for tutorials.
Here she is while getting some of her repairs before I took her to the boat yard. A little rough around the edges.
Next time I will post about hull polishing dos and don'ts (mostly donts) and gopro mounting dos and don'ts. To me this is the most important part of sailing. Everyone needs to know how rad we are.
Edited by catnoob on Oct 07, 2014 - 06:01 AM.
