Orange is the New White

February 21, 2016

Some things are arriving in the mail and others we are making.  This weekend we can share a little of both.  Our storm jib arrived from Voyager Sails.  I like orange, but in this case, it is a requirement that storm jibs are safety orange, so we didn’t even have a choice.  It is a svelte

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A Good Day for Testing…

February 7, 2016

We’ve been really lucky with great breeze this winter. Trying out our new (old) fully batten mainsail, which is much, much flatter than the Pentex main. A reef, #4, 6 people on the rail, max backstay, and traveller down. She’s given all she’s got Captain. Thanks so much, John Bartlett, for coming out to sail

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Now We’re Cookin’

January 26, 2016

Our Jetboil gimbal mount arrived today from the UK.  Looks like a nice piece of kit!  The bracket that attaches to the bulkhead is slotted so the whole mount can be easily removed when not needed. Funny thing when ordering the gimbal.  I emailed them to check availability and mentioned we were racing to Hawaii

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The Winter “To Do” List

January 19, 2016

It’s winter and Pacific Cup starts in 6 months.  That means it is time to get serious about the To Do list on Spadefoot.  It is so much easier to get things done on Spadefoot with the boat only 30 minutes away versus the preparing Shearwater for crossing oceans when the boat was 3-5 hours

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3D Printing for Spadefoot

January 17, 2016

One of the fun things about owning a custom one-off boat is that you get to do custom things without rules or restrictions.  This has been very true over the past year as we’ve added a retractable sprit and asymmetrical spinnakers.  The sprit is actually part of the original carbon Hoyt jib boom.  The brackets

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Excuse me, Spadefoot, how much do you weigh?

January 2, 2016

Answer – I have no idea. This is a big mystery that will be definitively solved on May 25, 2016. That is the date we are having Spadefoot weighed and measured for a certified PHRF rating needed for Pacific Cup 2016. Ironically, the original owner, Dick Horn, will be doing the weigh-in. The old After

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Spadefoot!

January 1, 2016

It’s time to pull this all together. Some of you know, some of you don’t. Last year, right after Pacific Cup, we bought another boat. It’s a one-off custom Schumacher 28. You can read all about the boat here – Spadefoot. For a time we thought we’d just use Facebook to cover our shenanigans on

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Shearwater – 2015 – A Year in Review

December 31, 2015

Geez, it’s been almost a year since we’ve posted to this blog, but that doesn’t mean we’ve stopped sailing Shearwater. Far from it. Shearwater is happy in Bellingham, and we’ve been up to visit as often as practical. • In March we raced Patos Island, starting in Sidney, BC. We were one of only 2

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2014 GBCA Yachtsman of the Year. Wow!

February 9, 2015

Wow! I think Chris & I have said that about 10 times in the last two days. On Saturday we drove the 3 hours to Seabrook, on the shores of Galveston Bay to attend the GBCA Commodore’s Ball. We took advantage of the trip to drop off a car load of used boat equipment we’d

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Oahu to Washington – Complete

August 15, 2014

Shearwater has completed her return voyage from Kaneohe Bay to the Pacific Northwest. She is now happily moored near the entrance of Hood Canal off Puget Sound waiting for us to sail her up to Bellingham over Labor Day Weekend. Thanks Bill & Darlene for taking care of our baby.

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