Oh hey ya, we have actually done some actual sailing over the past few weeks.
I’d actually like to take a moment to describe to you our relationship with the sail featured in the last video: the spinnaker, or as I like to accurately call it, the petulant child. You see, our spinnaker halyard shackle has no difficulty at all holding onto the spinnaker while we set the sail, and I have to say it releases fairly easily as well…it just seems to like to release the spinnaker while we are still flying it, turning our high-speed light wind sail immediately and without warning into a high drag and fairly effective parachute brake. This would be a great side feature of this shackle…you know, if we had some way to actually control it. As it stands though, when this happens (typically while Allan is on the stern showering) it leaves us with a sail to pull out from under the boat and a line to pull down from the top of the mast.
(Hey Mom, did I mention I was 1000 miles from the nearest hospital? Just thought you should know ;-).
Tiffany has gotten so sick of the whole affair that while doing laundry she began testing replacement sails.
Expect patents to be filed once we make landfall. Needless to say we installed a new shackle.
– Greg
We have gone to putting rigging tape on ours.
Yeah, we had rigging tape on it. Twice. It rubbed through somehow… So we put up a different type of shackle, and that seemed to make a big difference. Although, once we got into the tradewinds we really didn’t use the spinnaker very often – it was too windy! The genoa we had on Fly Aweigh was a great size, and we managed to make great time under it.
How were the Blue Angels? I wish we could have made it out with you Mike… 🙁
Hey, where are you guys these days? We are about to return to Stray Cat where she is on the hard in Puerto Escondido. We plan to be in Mazatlan for Christmas and then head south – just where we don’t know.
Hope all is well
Hi! We’re temporarily in the US to attend some weddings! We’ll be back in New Zealand in plenty of time to enjoy a nice warm Christmas there with Greg’s mom 🙂
Keep us updated on where your headed! We’d love to know more about heading south since we haven’t done that yet. I must say that I’m very happy with our choice of jumping the puddle! It’s been an awesome trip so far!
You look like an acrobat–and I LOVE the Circus!
Yeah, I don’t think acrobats get hit between the legs as much as I did by that freaking mast.