Tom and Michael preparing the boat for launch, at Clear Lake,
a few miles East of White Pass, Washington. It's obvious to
us now that we need a quicker way to rig the boat for the
trailer, without having to rethink it each time.
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Phil, Michael, and (who?) went out for a short first sail.
Tom went out next with Michael and Jamie. They mostly rowed,
with only a few puffs of breeze.
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What breeze we had today was mainly from the launch area.
Tacking back in was frustrating, as they couldn't actually
get the boat to tack.
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Phil took this shot straddling the main mast, sitting on the
deck in front of it with feet in the cockpit. It was
actually fairly comfortable, once I got my shorts
disentangled from the halyard and foresheet cleats.
I couldn't easily see where we were going, but I could
handle the foresheet and watch Karen steer and handle
the mainsheet, and Jen row.
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Notice our wake!
We got some pretty good light breezes on this trip, and had fun reaching, close reaching, and beating, but we couldn't get the hang of tacking. Karen would put the helm alee, the boat would begin to turn into the wind, but then would never make it around. She'd naturally put in more rudder, but instead of making us turn tighter, it would just slow us down.
Phil finally decided that what we had was lee helm, and the cause must be too much sail forward. So I tried putting both mast wedges forward of the mast, raking it back further. That seemed to help, though we still needed help from Jen on the oars to tack.
After Phil, Jen, and Karen hogged the boat for so long,
the last group was David, Michael, and Cheryl Purcell.
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Michael said my adjustment in mainmast rake made tacking much better.
Karen and David had to be in Eugene, Oregon at 7:00 AM the next morning for David's orientation for the University of Oregon, so this was it. We got back to Yakima by 5:00 or so, put the boat away (they'll leave it here for a while longer), had a quick supper, and Tom, Karen, and the boys hit the road around 6:20PM.