Back In The USSA

Well the good thing about doing the consulting gig all winter is that it gave my some spending money to waste on things like new sails. It all started innocently enough. My staysail was a complete diaper. The leach cord had rotted away and it was only a matter of time before the whole thing tore to shreds.
There are a couple of things about this cutter rig that is kind of a pain. One of them is the stay sail boom. Although it is probably quite a bit more efficient than not having a boom on the stay sail, it really clutters up the front deck. This makes it impossible to store the dingy on the deck or efficiently move across the fore deck. During rough seas the boom flops all over the place making for some interesting foredeck excursions. Since I was replacing the Stay sail, I decided to ditch the boom and replace it with a furler. And because I had just got paid from my consulting gig, I decided to go whole hog and replace ALL of the sails. Crazy you say? Probably. But the main was really poorly made and the Genoa didn't even have a foam luff. So I shopped around a bit and decided to go with a new set from UK Sailmakers Northwest.
One thing about living in Colorado and having your boat in Canada means that all projects are a royal pain in the arse. I thought about installing the new furler myself, but ditched the idea and instead decided to take it back to Port Townsend Rigging. While they installed the furler I would work on some other projects.
Road Trip
So after a big whirl wind drive that took us to a meeting with my clients in Sacramento and another job discussion in San Francisco we managed to end up in Oakland for the boat show. There we met up with friends from another Tayana-37, and had a grand old time lusting after all of the boat goodies. The one thing that I always take away is that we really like the design and layout of our boat. We also managed to make it to the Latts and Atts party and score some free Pizza and beer. The only problem was that it was really, really windy and cold.
The very next day we drove up to Bainbridge Island and hung out there for a bit. Now I was mentioning that commuting from the boat in Colorado to the Pacific Northwest was kind of a pain so we decided to investigate moving to Bainbridge. We hung out for about a week, looked at houses and tried to get a general feel for the place. I guess it could work.

Canoe Cove
That weekend a friend of mine met us up in Port Townsend. Saturday morning Kathy dropped us off at the Port Angeles-Victoria ferry and we hoofed it back up to Canoe cove. After about an hour of prepping the boat we cast off and headed to Friday Harbor. We had a little bit of wind and sailed whenever we could.
It was interesting to be in Friday Harbor in the off season (April 25th) not a whole lot going on, but we did manage a nice dinner at the pub and promptly crashed after that.
The next morning we headed out with the tide. We had a nice little wind and hoisted the sails right in the harbor. We pretty much did one jibe and then were on the same tack all of the way to Port Townsend. The wind did get a bit shift and stalled in the afternoon so we had to resort to a bit of motoring, but once things started blowing again we hoisted up the big cruising chute for the first time. This is one of those times that you wish you had the really wide angle lens. Note the festive Rasta Colors.
Port Townsend
The next week was spent doing a big pile of boat chores. Kathy flew back to Colorado to work on a charity event and I spent most of my time in the engine room installing shiney new equipment.
The next part of the plan was to bring the boat back up to Canoe Cove the following week after all of repair work had been completed. With Kathy gone (and me stuck with two cats!), I was having a hell of a time figuring out the logistics. I finally made an executive decision and said the hell with Canoe Cove and decided to move the boat to Bainbridge. Overall, it should be quite a bit more convenient than Canoe Cove. I had another fiend of mine join me for the next leg of the trip.
We ended up leaving at low tide so that we could ride the flood South into Puget sound. Now everyone knows that the wind almost always blows from the NW in this area. But not today, we had a nice SE wind right on the nose. The hell with it anyway. We ended up beating into the wind until it started getting to shifty and crazy. Later that afternoon, things switched back to the NW and we had a nice broad reach into Bainbridge.

May 1st - Opening Day on Puget Sound