Update – Getting settled in Seabrook

Shearwater has been at the Seabrook Shipyard off Galveston Bay for almost 2 months now.  Even though she is still 3 hours away, that is close enough that we are making regular trips to work on projects and actually do some daysailing.  Other than the stifling heat and humidity (we bought a portable LG AC unit from Lowes and it works wonders) our experience so far has been fantastic.  It’s really nice to be part of a sailing community with cruisers, racers, and marine stores all within minutes of the boat.  In fact, it reminds me a lot of Annapolis, but much less expensive.  We’ve joined the Galveston Bay Cruising Association (GCBA) and we’re looking forward to doing our first race aboard Shearwater next Saturday.  It’s somewhat humorous, but we are looking forward to sailing next to other boats as much as the race.  We’ve sailed 5000nm on Shearwater and so far, we’ve never sailed the same direction as another sailboat in sight.

It hasn’t been all roses though.  A few weeks ago we replaced the halyard shackle that was a fill-in for the shackle we broke last year in the middle of the Atlantic.  So, 2 weeks ago we headed out to the Saturday Rum Race with our race sails bent on for the first time and eager for some fun sailing.  We cleared the Clear Lake channel, hoisted the main, sheeted in and the main promptly fell to the deck, the halyard snaking into the mast.  “Somehow” the knot we tied to secure the new Tylaska shackle wasn’t so secure and we ended up with a not so easy to retrieve main halyard inside the mast.  Back to the dock.  That was perhaps the shortest sail I’ve ever done.  30 seconds tops.

This past weekend we returned to Shearwater armed with a small length of chain.  We secured the chain to the end of the main halyard.  Chris hoisted me up the mast one-more-time.  I dropped the chain over the sheave and down she went.  Easy peasy.  A sailor/biking friend recommended one last thing to make this even easier.  Use a magnet at the bottom to extract the chain out through the cutout in the side of the mast.  Smart thinking!

To make up for our disappointment from the week before, we went out for a sail and did a practice run of the upcoming Rum Race.  Chris steered the whole day, which was great and a first.  The race sails are amazing, although we need a little practice tacking the deck sweeping 155% genoa without it hanging up on the lifelines.

Mainsail shape? I’m not sure, but I think this looks pretty darn good.

We flew the big A2 spinnaker with the sock again and that went well, not perfect, but good enough.  We’ll learned a few things about hoisting and dousing.  Key thing – it is probably best to furl the genoa before deploying the chute because the sock lines are pretty much impossible to keep from getting wrapped into the furling genoa.  That’s not so pretty.

The A2. All 1650 square feet!

What else have we done?  Ah, we installed new Dyneema lifelines.  I ended up getting the lifelines from a rigger in The Netherlands because that was only place I could find Lancelin lines from France.  The lifelines have a 4mm (ORC minimum requirement) Dyneema core and a Dyneema cover with glow-in-the-dark strands.  The same lifelines a few of the Vendee Globe Open 60’s used last time around.  We ordered a new A4, smaller, heavier, running spinnaker from Ballard Sails (our night time sail for Pacific Cup) and we are signed up to race the Harvest Moon Regatta from Galveston to Corpus Christi in October.  We tried to do the race double-handed, but the organizers said no.  4 person minimum.  Thanks to my parents for coming along and giving us the 4 person minimum requirement.  I expect lots of eye rolling from Chris when she sees how much stuff I want to remove from Shearwater for the race.  Light is fast!

The new A4 is going to look like this.

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