Enjoying our Memory Maker

7-1-2015

 El Nino must be in full swing as we have had a daily threat of rain and storms since we launched our Memory Maker. Even with the rain threats we have tried every chance we can get to run over to the lake and raise sails. Some trips are more productive than others as several times we have arrived only to get rained on as soon as we get there or get a tornado warning on my phone for just south of our location. We elect not to sail on nights with tornado warnings, erring on the side of caution LOL. One night we could have sailed, had someone, sadly that was me, not went off and forgotten the rudder he had taken home to make a modification to. Hate it when that happens...
 But even with all the rain delays we have been making the best use of our Memory Maker and her new slip. We both really enjoy just being able to walk to the boat, hop on, load the cooler, uncover the sails, fire up the motor, untie and go sail. It is just awesome in fact! No more rigging sails, hooking up to the trailer, extending the tongue, launching the boat, driving back with the trailer, picking Cindy up at the dock, then doing it all in reverse again when we get back.
 When we have not been sailing or working on the house, I have been busy preparing our dingy for next summers North Channel adventure. At first Cindy thought I was crazy wanting to put a small outboard motor on the Walmart rubber boat that Bill and I had used to fish out of in Michigan. It had not been used since we got back from that trip so finally I had a reason to blow it up and dust it off. We lucked out and found the ideal motor about 40 minutes to our west on Craig's list. It is a small, as in 10 lbs, 2 stroke air cooled outboard. We ran over to get it and the lady we bought it from said her husband was upset as she priced it too cheap. It was in good shape but I saw there was a repair to the gas tank. We bought it and brought it home. It fire up and ran but leaked fuel which really stunk up my Tracker for several days.
 The gas tank repair was easy and is good as new now. Getting it to run properly took a bit of work as I had to take the carb off and clean it 4 times but finally I got all the hidden dirt and varnish blown out and now she starts on the first pull most of the time!

Once the motor was all dialed in I started on the motor mount for the dingy. Cindy still had her doubts at this point but I think she was starting to warm up to the idea of dingy cruises around the islands in the North Channel.

 First thing to do was to make a floor for the raft so it would be more stable and give me a place to attach the motor mount. One piece of 1/2 ply later we had a floor and she is very stable now. So much so I can see fly fishing out of her, standing up!!!



Here I am testing it our in Dottie's pool just shortly after we had opened it for the season. Hopefully all that chlorine she just dumped in the pool does not eat the dingy! Once the floor was fitted it was time to make the motor mount legs. Not having a way to bend EMT tubing I resorted to welding together cut pieces as I could get premade 90 degree transitions and I already had the tube I needed. A few hours later and we had a motor mount legs!

 So far so good. Just need to add the board to mount the Cruise and Carry on then she would be ready for her maiden voyage under outboard power. It was late and I was hungry so it would have to wait till the next day. Plus I needed screws to attach the board to the mount legs.
 The next morning after a quick trip to the hardware store and few minutes in the shop making a motor mount board the moment of truth had arrived. I carried the dingy down to our small pond and then attached the motor. After sinking up to my knee in a hole in the dam of the pond as I shoved off, more on that later, I was ready to fire her up. With one pull of the rope she roared to life, as much as 25 cc's of water muffled two stroke power can roar to life LOL! All was good so I engage the transmission and off I went. Did I mention our pond is small? Plus thanks to the hole in the dam I fell in during the launch the water was down a bit. So all I could do was one tight circle over and over again in the middle of the pond. It is so small I could not even get the motor off idle as it just went too fast! After a quick video to prove that it worked it was time to go to back to shore. Ok, I was getting dizzy from so many circles. Here she is after her maiden powered voyage

 Remember me saying how Cindy was slow to warm up to the whole dingy idea? Well after seeing proof with the video she was singing a new tune. So much so she asked if would take her grandson for ride in it when they got back home. Amazing how seeing truly is believing.
 With the dingy project a success I turned my attention back to installing our solar powered vent fan in the Memory Maker. Cindy was unable to go over with me as she was baby sitting her grandson as he got a new little sister the day before. He was clueless how much his life had just changed but I am pretty sure he has figured it out by now. So I loaded up the tools I need including the new hole saw bits Cindy picked up for me and headed to the lake. It only took about five minutes after I got there to realize I had screwed up again. Seems the directions I read online about how to install the fan were for the other fan I had been considering. It took a 4 1/4" hole while the one I bought took a 4 1/2" hole, Argghhh. So needless to say there was no fan install that night as I did not have a 4 1/2" hole saw. I started to just button her up and head back home but it was a nice evening, there was a nice breeze, and it seemed like such a shame to not got out for a quick sail.
 Having never sail single handed before this was going to be new for me but I really thought I could do it. It just took a few minutes to get things ready and soon I was motoring out of the slips. I took some precautions to make sure I returned to the slips with the boat. I threw a 25 foot long deck line out off the port stern cleat. In case I feel overboard I could swim over and grab it instead of letting the boat sail off without me. I just flipped the fenders up on the deck instead of bringing them in and I only planned on raising the main sail since the boat does not like going straight by itself. Soon I was raising the main and sailing into a beautiful sunset. It did not take long to figure out to do this successfully I would need some help in the form of some way to keep the tiller in place while I tended to other matters. So out of necessity I rigged up what I affectionately refer to as the Redneck Tiller Tamer

 OMG!!! Why had I not done this sooner???? Talk about making life so much easier!!! I was able to set a heading, then get up and do things without going for a wild ride like we would each time we would take our hand off the tiller for any amount of time longer than 5 seconds! Cindy was going to love this! Speaking of Cindy, I was really missing her. Sailing by myself was just boring once I got everything set up and the boat cleaned up. It was not long before I turned back and headed in. Making memories by myself is not near as much fun as making memories with Captain Cindy.
 The jib bag that I made has worked very well and since I did not raise the jib by myself it just rode along on the bow

 My first attempt at single handing went just fine and I returned our girl to her slip with no issues. After adding the tiller tamer I am pretty sure I could have raised the jib as well. I buttoned her all back up and installed the covers then headed for home.
 Cindy and I finally got a nice evening this past Monday and we headed for the lake like a couple of home sick angels. It was a perfect evening with a nice breeze out of the northwest which allowed us to sail on a beam reach down the long length of the lake to area we call the Narrows. The wind was blowing 10-12 mph with higher gusts so at Cindy's urging I reefed the main sail. With Cindy back at the helm we raised sails and headed for the land beyond the bend that we had only sailed to once before. It was like uncharted territory for us in a way. We clipped right along a beam reach making good progress down the lake. About a mile or so into the sail I remembered to start my tracking app so we could see how far and how fast we had gone. Here is a look at our sail path

 We pretty much ran a straight line on a beam reach out of the slips to the southwest till we got closer to the Narrows then the wind started to shift and we had to tack a couple of ties to get past the Narrows. Once past the point to Allen's creek we turned south and sailed down to the 4 Winds area before nasty clouds to our north made us turn back as it was going to be an hour or so back to the slip. It took a bit of tacking back and forth to  clear the Allen's creek point but once back into the Narrows we set course for the cove where our slip is at and sailed on a broad reach which turned into a running sail about half way back. To the non sailors looking at our track we look a bit lost and confused. To me that is a course line of beauty compared to what we normally have to sail. Most days when the wind is out of the southwest we have to tack back and forth a dozen times or more just to get to the boy scout camp cove we like to anchor in which is only about half way to the narrows. The wind shifts around so much on this lake due to the trees that what starts out as one heading soon turns into something else 45 degrees off the first one.
 The app I was using also tracks your speed. It showed us topping out at 6.43 mph. I know, that is not eye watering fast but considering the boat's listed hull speed is only 5.5 mph we were humming right along!!! I was surprised how slow it felt when we were running with the wind to our stern but it still showed us making better than 4 mph. It just seemed a lot slower as the wind was not in our face and since we were going with it we did not feel the full speed of the wind blowing past us from the stern.
 Cindy was at the tiller for the biggest part of the sail. I want to get her as much tiller time as possible so her comfort level and proficiency increase as much as possible. Cindy is still a bit apprehensive when the boat heels over much past 15 degrees. We are fine up past 30 and she will round up and plop down into the water between 40 and 45 degrees. Ideally we would get the best speed at between 15 and 20 degrees of heel. For the most part we ran between 10 ad 15 the majority of the time and she loved that but there were the occasional gust that would load the sail and heel us over a bit more. The idea is when that happens you want to keep the boat going straight by pulling on the tiller to counteract the wind trying to blow the bow off course. As the wind reduces back to a normal speed you want to release the pressure on the tiller to maintain your heading. If done right it is very smooth and no one knows the better. The boat will just heel over and then return back to the pre gust heel angle once it dies down. Cindy is doing much better now after another 3 hours at the tiller. She now keeps the main sheet tucked under her leg so it is right there as needed should she need to release the main sheet to reduce the heel. Bad things would happen when she would have to looked down to the cockpit floor then reach for the main sheet. Her short lil arms do not have much reach so she would have to slide down to reach it and with her other hand on the tiller the chances of holding it in place were slim to none. Several interesting moments were caused by that maneuver. Now with the main sheet tucked under her leg there is no more dropping of the head. Plus with her doing a much better job of holding a heading during a gust the overall ride is much smoother. Cindy really liked the tiller tamer and said it made things much easier as well.  I am very proud of her progress and I am really hoping she too will get to where she can single hand our girl soon.

 Here is my pretty lil Captain doing her thing. Luckily our sail came with a reef point built in as some of them did not. I used a much simpler procedure for reefing this time and it worked very well. I used our Nite Eyz Grip Ties to tie up the extra main sail around the boom and that worked really well too. I really thinking our boat is a floating promo for Nite Eyz and there Grip Ties as we use them everywhere for everything. They are awesome and very handy to have on hand.
 I practiced a heave to again and showed Cindy how it is done. On the way back once we entered the Narrows I had Cindy heave to so I could un reef the sail since we were going to be running with the wind. The more sail the better in light winds and running like we were. Cindy had no problem getting the boat to settle down and just sit there calmly in the water using the heave to maneuver.
 All too soon we were back to the slips and I went about getting everything ready to dock. Cindy guided us into the slip with the prowess of a seasoned veteran of several around the world voyages. We went about our task of securing our girl to the slip and getting her all tucked in from a wonderful sail. On the ride home we laughed another good old laugh about our first sailing lesson with Capt Scott and how much we learned what not to do!!!