Season Recap

I didn't do as much sailing this season as I would have liked. Seemed like I always had something else scheduled.

Our club has several fun events every year. Two of them are variations on a single idea. These are not a good idea (and may not even be legal from a "littering" perspective in some areas) on anything but a closed lake.

The Captain Morgan Race involves a power boat going out about 15 minutes ahead of the harbor start time. It has about a hundred sandwich sized plastic bags with one or more plastic "doubloons" in each. They blast along tossing the bags overboard. Then the fleet heads out and has one hour to gather up as many as they can and get back to the clubhouse with the treasure each has collected. The boat with the most doubloons wins a fifth of Captain Morgan Rum.

The other is the Poker Race. Same concept, but using playing cards instead of plastic coins. The goal is to make the best 5-card poker hand.

The problem with both races is that the fleet only recovers about half or less of the bags thrown in. Obviously not good if wildlife will be harmed and could create a litter issue on the lee shore. In our case there's a road all the way around the lake, so the roaming bags can be gathered after a few hours when the drift to shore.

Gloria and I came away from the Poker Race with a bottle of spiced rum.

The other Event race was the long distance race. Now having a long distance race on a circular lake that's just a mile and a half across might seem tedious. But there are buoys spaced around the perimeter and we set up a course that zigzagged around for something like 16 miles. To make it more interesting, we applied the handicap to the start times. The slowest boats left first with faster ones leaving when their handicap said they should. If all worked right everyone would get back to harbor at about the same time.

Then, just to take it up another notch, start right at sunset so much of the race is in darkness. There are few other boats on the lake, so traffic is not an issue. The fleet gets back about 11:00 to well after midnight, and there's a hearty breakfast at the club. In short, it is always a blast and we look forward to it.

But now, with Serene Dream in her dry slip, it's time to start those projects that I didn't have time for during sailing season.

The Sailing Season Ends. . .

Tonight Gloria and I had a beautiful evening sail.  The sky was partly cloudy, temps were in the low 70's and winds 5-8 mph.  Just a wonderful sail, and a fitting end to our sailing season.  On our return, as a gorgeous sunset painted the west, we loaded Serene Dream onto her trailer, power washed the hull (which looked like a 5-day beard) and backed the trailer into the dry slip for the winter.

Such is the life of sailing in a water reservoir and in a drought.  The water in the lake has fallen steadily for several weeks, to the point that all the fin keel boats were pulled out last week or the week before.  With her swing keel, our Catalina 22 could sail in and out of the harbor for probably another week or two, but we barely had enough water to load her on the trailer.

I am a bit disappointed with the VC-17 antifouling paint.  Yes, it kept the long strands of algae from growing, but the short stuff that looks almost like lichens were all over the bottom and keel.  Then too, the power wash took off a hefty chunk of what paint was left, so it looks like another total bottom job again this year.

In a couple days I'll drop the mast and start finalizing the winter job list.  I already know I will be installing a VHF radio antenna at the top of the mast, running coax cable down the mast and figuring out how to attach it at the deck.  I'll also be replacing the plug that connects the mast lights to the wiring in the deck.

Apparently I will be sanding and prepping the bottom for more antifouling paint.  I wish I could find one that doesn't slough off like chalk and will last more than one year.  It also has to be able to be completely dry as I trailer Serene Dream at least once or twice a year.  Of course, she also spends half the year on the dry sitting on her trailer.  There's got to be a bottom paint that will deal with all that and still look good.