Ludicrous Speed

Since repowering Sojourn, I’ve taken it easy, rarely getting above 2000 RPM.  My knot meter isn’t working and was never calibrated, so I don’t actually know how fast that pushes her – perhaps 3.5-4 knots, obviously just shy of light speed.  Yesterday Annie and her friend Loren were begging to go to Jetty Island.  We only had about an hour and it’s about a half mile each way, so light speed was going to be too slow.  The river was calm, so we tied every thing down, took our seats and pushed Sojourns power lever all the way forward to, yes, ludicrous speed.

Up river, the GPS settled on 5.5 knots.  20 minutes later, it settled on 7.3 knots on the return course. So, ludicrous speed averaged 6.4kts on the GPS with the engine turning 3500-3600 RPM and no evidence of soot or smoke.  So for Islander 30 MKII and Bahama owners with Beta 14’s, if any others exist, here is a data point for you.

Incidentally, this sinks the transom to the point that the exhaust fitting, which is normally 4-5 inches above the water line, is completely submerged.  The Beta 14 came with a 2:1 ratio gear box and is spinning a 13X8 2 blade Michigan Sailor prop. 

Musty Old Boat With a Hint of Lemon

Well that lasted about a week.  Actually two, but about two years less than I was hoping for.  It was warm on Sunday and Sojourn’s cabin was about 80 degrees.  I opened the companion way and was greeted with the familiar odor of musty old boat with a hint of diesel, albeit with slightly less diesel and a hint of lemon.  

I’m dismayed to report that lemon oil was very short lived.  The faded color of the wood has largely returned as well.  Hopefully Rebecca Whitman's advise on this will be better than Don Casey’s.  That said, the lemon oil took about an hour.  Proper oiling will take a lot longer. I guess you get what you work for.

A New Twist

I’ve been playing with sail trim trying to get to know my boat. If you read my post entitled A Lesson Learned, a Sojourn Survived and are an experienced sailor, you probably realized that part of my problem was that my sails were out of trim as evidenced by massive amounts of weather helm.  I’ve since discovered, at least with some combinations of reefing, head sail and trim, that Sojourn is well balanced, resulting in very light tiller forces.

In my experimenting, I’ve observed the phenomenon of sail twist, or more accurately induced sail twist to improve flow over my sails.  I’ve never fully appreciated until I put “tell tales” on my shrouds. 

What exactly is “sail twist?”  Sail twist is intentional twisting of the sail to account for the phenomenon of apparent wind direction being different at the head then at the foot of the sail. This is a result of the true wind speed being greater higher up than at the water surface.  In other words, the wind appears to be blowing in a different direction at the top of the mast than down at the boom.

Click on the picture, zoom in if you need to, to find the wind vane and compare the direction it is pointing to the direction the tell tale is blowing. If you can’t find it, the wind vane is  pointed directly abeam, precisely parallel with the spreader.

Crab N Sail

The family counselor of a friend once said that in his experience, boats are the single best family-centric activity there is.  With that in mind, and a decade of living right next to Puget Sound never having taken advantage of it, we bought Sojourn back in November.

This spring I repowered over the course of a couple of months and, sadly, as I occasionally drug the kids up to the boat while I finished the repower, it did not endear them to the boat.  In fact, to my 7 going on 17 year old, boating and boring are now synonymous. 

I have it in my head that fishing is a fun and patience building experience for kids.  Why? I have no idea. In my experience with fishing, it is aptly named.  I see and know others who actually catch, but I seem to just fish.  So I had a bright idea to take the kids fishing on the boat.  A friend advised me, “just put a piece of hot dog on a hook with a sinker and drift the south shore of Hat Island.  You can’t fail.”  Apparently I can.

Fortunately as we approached July, we also came upon crabbing season, and another opportunity.  On Saturday, I bought all of the gear for two pots.  At the risk of sounding like I know what I’m doing, we are almost ideally situated for crabbing and sailing.  One popular crabbing spot is basically a quarter mile outside of the marina.  My hope is that it will be convenient to toss a couple of pots on the way out whenever we go sailing. 

On Saturday, we had a short afternoon window,  so we motored out to the crabbing area, dropped anchor and pots and just enjoyed the sunshine. We pulled the first pot and got two small crabs.  This was promising.  We pulled the second, which also had two – both over 6-1/4 inches.  One turned out to be a female and the other very tasty! And, I think I’ve started to turn the tide on the perception of our boat. 

Jack and Annie spend hours delighting in the various aspects of the crabbing experience. Annie desperately wanted to keep it for a pet.  Jack got to “help” clean it.  They both spent about an hour trying to muster the courage to pick up the shell.