First sail

The first “sail” wasn’t actually a sail. It was more of a launch and float test. I had never trailered anything before, let alone launched a boat, so it was pretty nerve wracking but it went smoothly.  With a little help from my friends, I launched off the trailer and motored around for a bit with my trolling motor (55 lb thrust minnkota electric transom mounted trolling motor with a 20AH LiFePo battery. 

The first sail was a couple of weeks later when most of the family could be there. My good friend Matt, who is a lifelong sailor and licensed captain, went with me on the maiden sail. It went very well and we both got a turn at the helm and were happy with the way she sailed. 


After the initial shakedown sail, I took the my wife and  two of my three daughters out.  I am a novice sailer at best, but it went as smooth as I could have hoped for a first sail.  


I haven’t been great about updating my blog (something that was annoyingly common in other blogs so I swore I wouldn’t do because I got invested in some of the other build blogs and was disappointed when they ended without saying how the boat worked). In fact, as I wrote this it’s been almost 2 years since the launch. It no excuse, but think it’s such a long project that when it’s over, you just want to sail.


 
I’ve sailed her a few dozen times, always on Canandaigua lake so far.  Canandaigua is a beautiful lake with clear water and is not too crowded, but can be challenging to sail on because the winds tend to be shifty and gusty due to the surrounding terrain. Fortunately I’m usually just sailing to the winds, not a specific destination, so I can see the wind on the surface and sail to it.

I’m getting a little better and quicker at setting up the boat and sailing every time I go out which is encouraging. Especially at launching from the dock, which was always the scariest part for me. I made a lot of small improvements to make things easier and faster to rig and sail this year, but I’ll show those in a future post. 

The boat is holding up very well with just a few minor scuffs on the rub rail from kissing the dock, but I have grown to accept those as signs of good times on the boat - my attitude is “that’s why they call them rub rails”.

So overall I am extremely happy with how she turned out and how she sails and look forward to sailing every chance I get!

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