Fortunately, I convinced Mike and Kris (and Marie and Jerry) to come out for a weekend and give me a hand. and I'm sure glad they came. Mike knows these cats inside and out and could have put them together blindfolded. Left to my own devices, it would have taken me several days to do what we did in seven hours last Saturday.
As it turned out, I was too busy working to take even a single photo, but fortunately Megan was able to digitally document our progress. I don't have the originals, but I managed to copy a few of the photos from her Facebook page. If you're Facebook friends with Megan, you can see a whole bunch of photos on her page. When I get the full complement of photos I'll post more. In the meantime, here's a taste:
If at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer. Especially one from the woodpile.
Megan took a break from taking pictures to give us a hand getting the mast up.
Here are the two of them - on land, but pretty much ready to sail.
After the boats were assembled and rigged, we took down the sails and got them ready for transport. By then it was 7PM, so we retired to the cabin for some well-deserved brats and beer.
On Sunday, we took one of the boats to Fish Lake for its maiden voyage. It was a bit drizzly, and there was virtually no wind, but we went for it anyway. The Fish Lake boat ramp is sheltered in a bit of a cove, so once the boat was in the water, Mike and I had to paddle out a little way to catch some wind. There wasn't much out there, but Hobie cats are so light and have so much sail area that it doesn't really take much to get them moving. We had a good sail and I more or less learned the ropes without the danger of going too fast to get out of control. When Mike and I were done, Mike and Kris went out for a bit, and then Megan and I went out. Judging from the ear-to-ear grin on her face the whole time we were out, I think I may have a sailor on my hands.
We did learn a valuable lesson getting the boat out of the water. Once the boat was on the trailer but not yet tied down and with the mast still up, I pulled it out off the ramp so that others could load their boats. Well, like a dummy, and even though we'd been warned about the overhead wires, I proceeded to try and pull down a power line with the mast of the boat. Fortunately, I was going about a half mile an hour when the mast hooked the power line and tried to slide the boat off the back of the trailer. Even then we didn't immediately realize what was wrong until someone looked up. I backed up, we pushed the boat back on, and proceeded to a safe area to drop the mast and tie down the boat. It was a good lesson to learn, especially without doing any damage.
I won't have any pictures of the boat on the water until Megan posts them on Facebook or I get my hands on her memory chip, but I will post them when they become available.
Thanks again to Mike for all his expertise. We couldn't have done it without him.
Oh, and one more thing. The boats need some names, and I'm having a hard time coming up with anything other than the less than socially acceptable names that first came to my depraved mind. So if anyone can come up with some catchy names other than Breaking Wind and Blow Me, let me know.
No comments:
Post a Comment