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We slept like the dead through saturday night, even the sound of the band from the deck above the docks as they late into the night didn’t keep us awake. Lack of sleep from the friday nightgale and a long day racing saturday left us exhausted. While many partied late into the night after the race, most of us that had been there for friday night’s storm made an early night of it saturday. In contrast to friday night the water and wind saturday night was calm to the point of flat with the boat not moving at all through the night other than to rock to the wake of the rare vessal that passed by on the inland waterway just yards away.
Sunday morning dawned bright and clear with blue skies and a strong chill breeze. Though slow to get up and moving just about everyone was ready to leave and had cast off the docks by 9am. Orrin on La’ Bon Vie was towing Angela on Valkyr down the waterway and back to Little River. Pirate Girl (Patty) and Winds of Freedom (Ben) also took the waterway back to Little River.
I didn’t think we were going to get to race. The wind was blowing dead on our stern as we sat in our slip at a steady 25 kts with gusts into the low 30s. We had a pole dead behind us that we needed to slide sideways around (about 9 feet to starboard to clear it before we could then back out into the channel).
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With only a 4 hp outboard I wasn’t sure it was up to controlling us in a sideways slide and then backing against the wind and fetch that was coming at our stern. With all of us on the boat (Jay and Miriam and Me) we did a couple of test runs while still tied to the dock. Each time I was able to take the slack out of the docklines from where we were being pushed into the slip by the wind and waves. So with just a few minutes before our start in the race I made the decision to give it a try. We used a line from the port stern cleat to the piling behind us on starboard for some extra security, just in case we had a problem. However it all went very smooth.. With the poor engine going full out we slowly moved sideways around the pole behind us and then out into the channel. 🙂 I almost didn’t give it enough room before going into forward. With the wind pushing us back at the docks I thought for a moment that it was going to push us into them before I got turned away. The nice thing about my outboard is that I can turn it as well as the tiller and it gives me an increadably tight turning radius. I used it 🙂
It continually amazes me how maneuverable Sea Puppy is and how little power she needs to move. She realistically weighs in with us on board with fuel, water, batteries, engine etc.. at about 4000lbs. Her dry weight just the boat with no stores, fuel etc.. on her is around 3300 lbs. a whopping 900 more than the factory specks show. Every 235 owner I have heard of that has weighed their boat has reported similar weights. I would like to move up to a 6hp engine though just to have a little more margin in power.
You have to wonder about people that sail sometimes. I mean the forcast was for rain and 20 knots all day friday. Thirty to fifty knots gale force winds that night. Mid twenty knots saturday and twenties on Sunday.
So what do I and 5 other boats do Friday? head up the waterway from Little River Inlet to Cape Fear River via the Intracoastal Waterway friday morning. 3 of the boats had dogers and or bimini’s but a couple of us didn’t have anything but foul weather gear. The forcast was right.. It rained, it poured, it blew, and we motored on and on through it.
Went sailing on sea puppy with Cary Huhr and his girlfriend Michelle. Tested new single line reefing and it seems to work well.
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Well we got the engine working. Miriam helped me drag the engine out at pattys while I was dog sitting and we rebuilt the fuel pump and cleaned out the carberator. We also pulled the lower unit off and replaced the impeller. All in all it wasn’t a terible job. We had to do the impeller twice though as the water pickup didn’t slot in correctly the first time and when I tested it the engine was not spitting water while running.
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