Painted Bluenose

With the keel and hull painted, the boat is travelling much faster in the water. It didn't look to be all that rough when we pulled it out, but the difference after painting is quite significant and made for a good time on the water last time out. We have been working on the topside, now, varnishing the rails with a satin finish and putting on the new registration number decal, which I'll try to get a picture of soon. Our next project will be to paint the deck (after a few sails on the bay).

BLUEnose Sloop - at last

Sorry, I haven't posted in awhile. We decided to have this baby painted. Time considerations, skill deficiencies, and practicality meant that we would have the hull/keel painted by a pro. We will then paint the deck and varnish the teak trim. There is only one option in Morro Bay: Joe at The Boatyard. First he had to get it out of the water. It was a little tricky to get the backstrap inside the rudder and leave enough space, but you can see it was successfully pulled out. It's a bit of a shock to see all that hull, keel and rudder for the first time. It was a bigger shock to see the name "EVA" on the back. For some reason, we had never noticed it. Joe and his assistants are quite the characters. You feel like you are hanging out with some old school mariners. Be warned, though, he charges a new school price.
Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of it before they put it back in the water after it was painted. They gave me a polaroid and maybe I'll have it scanned.

You can see that it gives the boat a nice new look in this picture with my wife and in-laws in the background. It is now officially a BLUEnose Sloop. This will be a very classy looking boat once we paint the deck and cockpit and varnish the teak. In for a penny, so now we are committed to it for awhile and it will prevent us from the purchase of a bigger boat, which is a good thing, I suppose...

New Year, New Motor

We got a 4 hp Nissan motor and, after a few weeks of bad weather, tides too low for clearance, etc., we got out today for a trial run. The motor is much smoother than the old Yamaha and can run on a low idle, which makes departure a little less stressful. It was a nice day on the water with 8-10 knot winds, which were a little more changeable than usual. Despite the good conditions for sailing today, there was hardly anyone out on the water. It sure is great to live in a place where you can sail in January! (*Note to Bill in the comments of the previous post - and welcome - Morro Bay has strong incoming and outgoing currents related to the tides and shallow waters - sailing out of our little marina in the thin buoyed channel with strong currents working against us and the wind usually right in our face would be a problem - even worse would be trying to sail back with dead wind when the current is pushing us backwards).
We are quite happy with our purchase of this boat. It sails well in the harbor, it is very low maintenance, has good speed and gets some admiration from other boaters. Some of the bigger boats on the harbor are rarely ever sailed. I think this is partially because of the rough sea once you get out of the harbor. So the boats are too big to maneuver around and just sail in the harbor and the sea is too rough to really have much fun as a day sailer. We now realize that, barring an unusually calm day on the sea, we will have to confine the Bluenose to the harbor. To do more open water sailing, we really need to head down to the more protected waters in Santa Barbara and charter a bigger boat.
Our next project will probably be a scrape and paint of the hull. We considered doing it ourselves, but both of us have significant time commitments and lack a trailer to pull it out of the water in any case, so we will set up a time to have it painted at the local boat yard. Yes, we will have it painted blue.

Engine Tribulations

Our little 4hp, 4 stroke Yamaha has conked out on us once again. We already brought it to the shop twice and they "fixed" it well enough to get it running for 3 or 4 outings before we are back at square one. I'm just about ready to chuck the thing in a dumpster and get a new outboard, but my partner in crime is somehow motivated to give it one last try. We are done bothering with the (apparently) marginally incompetent repair shop, so we loaded the engine in his truck and he is going to try and fix it at home. Failing that, we are looking at getting a new outboard, an option I would almost prefer at this point.

Some pics of the bluenose

Here are some pics of the boat. Yes, the hull of the Bluenose is inexplicably painted red. We intend to remedy that, soon.



This is the cockpit. It is a large cockpit as it is more designed as a racing boat with only a storage cabin.



This is a picture as we approached Morro Rock under sail. The sailing gets very tricky here, because the wind gets blocked and can also be swirly here.



This is the boat in the slip next to ours. This boat has an interesting history. It was built in, I believe, the 1950's in the Amazon rainforest using crude hand tools and indigenous wood. A man and his son sailed it down the Amazon and into the Atlantic, all the way up to Florida (I don't know how it made it to the other side of the continent, but I'll assume it was towed across). We spoke with the daughter or granddaughter, I forget which, who I think keeps it there mostly for nostalgia's sake.


A common sight in Morro Bay are sea otters floating on their backs and enjoying VERY fresh crab. Sorry for the poor quality of the pic, but all these were done with my i-phone.

Santa Barbara and Channel Islands

I should mention that we had a great sail in Santa Barbara with a 32' Catalina. The first day was a bit foggy, but we had decent, steady wind all the way across to Santa Cruz Island. We anchored in an area called "Prisoner's Cove". This wasn't really our first choice, but some of the other coves had boats in them and since this was our first attempt at anchoring overnight, we were a little skittish. The anchoring went fine. For the record, the Channel Islands have some pretty good swells, even in the coves, so if you anchor there, expect an up and down, "where the f&&k did I put the dramamine" kind of night.
On the way back the next day, the sky was clear and the wind was strong. We had to reef down the sail for most of the ride across and still rarely went below 5 to 6 knots. We were thankful for the experience of reefing on the Bluenose the previous week, as it gave us a little more confidence and less reluctance about reefing the sails on the Catalina.
All in all, it was a great experience, but I think we both agreed that future sailing in Santa Barbara would probably not include an overnight in the Channel Islands.

Reefing

We took the boat out this week for a little warmup before we charter a 32 foot catalina this weekend in Santa Barbara. We had gotten a manual bilge pump and cleared out a lot of water from the hull, so the boat has been heeling a bit more and feels lighter. When we got out into the channel and raised the sails, we really had our ass handed to us. We couldn't really get much control of the boat. The wind was probably up near the 20 knot range, which we haven't seen before. We pulled down the sail, pulled ourselves together and gave it another go with a reefed sail. For a few tacks, we left the jib down and when we felt we were ready, raised the jib. Wow! We were really heeling and the boat almost looks like it's underwater when the rails go under. This was some rather intense sailing in a the narrow channel, moving quickly with a little bit of traffic in the channel and fast tacking. We had joked on previous sails that we were never going to reef the sail, and it is good that we had this experience before we got out on open water. It is good to be humbled once again.