New Sails. In the last blog, you will see a picture of Nati. This is a 38' cat and the owners are from NY. We sailed out of St. Augustine together and saw them again at Osprey. In the picture, we are close reaching at 8 knots and Nati is passing us. You can see she has nice new laminate sails. Since Yammy and I do not like being passed, we decided to go for the new sails a few years earlier than planned. The UV cover on our headsail was shredding anyway. At least that is my excuse.
We decided to go with the Carbon Fiber laminate with a Taffeta layer, on each side, to protect against chafe. Working with Haarstick, we went through many new sail cloths and decided this would be the best for our coastal cruising and desire to make our cat perform upwind. They will be coming here to measure the boat and plan to deliver around Labor Day. In the meantime, we need to get a new mainsail cover and possibly a rigid vang installed.
There are many other projects underway as well. The pictures, below, are of my first gelcoat work. The aluminum latches have been a problem since we bought the boat. Don't know why anyone would use aluminum latches in area where saltwater sprays constantly. To accommodate the smaller round latches, I had to fill the old hole. The gelcoat matched perfectly. We now have the option to lock the hatches as well.
We went with compression latches from GEM. They had the best reviews on line. Calling them netted me nearly a $100 in savings from their online pricing. So far, we are very pleased.
Last year, folding props gave us 2.5 knots of sailing speed. Hoping for at least a knot with new sails. As always, we are working to continually lighten the ship as well. Looking forward to sailing again this fall.
Enjoy the summer!
Never saw a dredging rig like this before. It was about 2 miles south of the Charleston Inlet. From a distance, we thought they were filming for the next alien movie :)
