Saturday, May 05, 2007

Stolen Accounts and Finicky Cats...

I have sneakily guessed Sharon's password to this blog and can therefore post without her knowledge... So I thought I'd update you with a brief tale of our first sail on our very own finicky catamaran.

I'll leave it to Sharon to post pictures soon.

I spent Friday and part of today figuring out how to actually rig the cat correctly. It's tougher than you might imagine due to the awkwardness of maneuvering the very tall mast.

Oops, Sharon just walked in and caught me. So to continue...

We found a sail sport friendly park from which no motorized vehicles may be launched and decided it looked like a good place to put in. Rigging was a fairly routine event as was the launch itself. Actually the entire sailing experience was going relatively well until...

The sail suddenly burst from it rigging and flew out 90 degress to the boat at about mach 3. The hardware that holds my main sheet to the super-traveler had just snapped, fell into the water and plummeted about 200 feet into the deep channel of the river. Don't worry though - we do end up surviving this ordeal.

It turns out that holding a sail by hand on a sunfish and holding the sail of a catamaran by hand are night and day. There is just so much more sail for a catamaran that the amount of wind you need to hold onto is very much more formidable. We did manage to limp the boat back to the dock, unrig and pack up. Unfortunately in the process I fell off the trailer and cut my lower back and thigh on various metallic protrusions.

Over all, a very strong learning experience; next time will be much smoother.

For a video of our model boat in action see: http://www.sailingtexas.com/cboats99hobie14.html
Video is in upper right corner.

PS
Sharon finally got a working dishwasher - I had two spare dishwashers for some reason.

PPS
Sharon bought me a nice gas grill for my birthday. It's a little early but we have freshly caught fish (21" bass + 3x14" bass) to cook so I get to play with it already!

Goodbye for now. Sharon will probably be changing her password so who knows when you'll hear from me again.

Ross.

5 comments:

Evelyn said...

Ross, sorry you got hurt! Happy early birthday too :)

This boating business sounds difficult - lots of words I dont even know!!

So - is sharon's password that predictable or did you get a hint?

Anonymous said...

Bem eu realmente não necessitei senha do Sharon. O blogger é amarrado a outros serviços... e seu um defeito de segurança que você pode aceder blogger indiretamente desses serviços ainda que eles não compartilham um username nem senha.

Sou um l337 h4x0r

Hope my Portuguese is up to standard - it's been years.

Evelyn said...

WHAT? WOA!!! You're Portuguese is like almost PERFECT -two grammar errors but your vocabulary is better than mine as I wouldn't have been able to remember the word for password.... (embarassed look)

Man, I am still in shock for reading something in Portuguese. haha

What is a I337 h4xor? i don't know that one ;)

Did you find a translating service or did you get your friend to translate?

Anonymous said...

Haha yea you got me. Try freetranslation.com. l337 h4x0r is silly teenager technophilic slang for elite hacker.

Anonymous said...

Sharon, I'm excited for your dishwasher, grill and cat. Please take good care of your guest blogger so he doesn't hurt himself. He makes me laugh. KJ