Moving Dinghys for college students

We used the same truck that pulled our boat out to the lake to haul 8 Dinghys for the University of Illinois Sailing Club from where they purchased them to Champaign/Urbana.

This is the culmination of a nearly $40K project. With these 8 boats the club will now be able to host it's own regattas in the Midwest Collegant Sailing Association.

the truck had a flat front tire on the way down, so when we got there we had to unload in the dark.

Bird's Eye View

These pics are from the harbor cam at Shouth Shore in Milwaukee. http://www.lakefrontcam.com/jpegsouth.html














This boat is the "Dirty Vicor" a neighbor in the mooring field.

Sailed this weekend

We got the boat out under sail this weekend. And even in only 7-10 knts of wind the 155 is way too much headsail in those conditions.


We got the Autohelm calabrated, but may still need to move the "cumpass" as it is off by 18 degrees. The ST 4000 also tries to correct course by turning to port only. From researching the intraweb, it turns out that is common and we have to look at "low voltage" or whatever that means.

The Knt meeter said we were doing 0.0kts, but the GPS said 6.9 knts, so we gotta sort that out.

Parker (9 year old grand son) was aboard and did well, even though we were all over the place with tacks and jibes. We managed to make a huge mess below decs, as it has accumulated 10 years woth of crap sitting and not being sailed.

The GPS unit worked great! We put a Lake Michigan detailed map "chip" in it and it performed as expected. It is monochrome though, color would be nice, but is not actually neccessarry.

Wish I took the camera, oh well.....

HAPPY BIRTHDAY !!

Today is my dad's birthday!

Happy birthday Papa!

Love,

No Need to pull the boat out, nor the motor

JB Weld is a cool thing. We were able to fix up the motor's crack with out pulling the boat out and without pulling the motor out of the boat.

There are some seals and "O" Rings that need replacing, but that is not an emergancy. So that's nice.

Daddy's Little Sailor!

(even wearing dad's hat!)

DARN!

OK, so the boat is in the water, but we thought we had a leak. Well we do, and this is the leak:



It has a crak in it and whenever it runs it sprays water all over the cabin.

We will be pulling the boat out, then deciding what to do....

Darn :-(

Happy Anniversary Hon!

Eric & I have been married 18 years today! My gift to him is this blog redesigned. Hope it isn't too sissy looking!
I even made you your own signature!

I LOVE YOU!

Pics from the launch

It was a long day. I could tell you all about it, but you probably have done the same things yourself. There are a thousand deatail to look after. There are Three very spacific screws needed to put the furler back together, and all three of them were in a differnt location, I am shocked we found them in a few minutes, let alone found them at all. But you have done stuff like that.

Here are the pics from the day, not all of them, but enough to tell the story witout words. Clicking on the pics will show them full size. There is even some video further down.







But First a harty meal!

Floating

Just after launch

sorting out lines

Just before the launch I was sorting out some lines.

Climbing on

After this, I remembered that you could just step over the live lines....

It was nice that my son got it all on camera...

It's In the water.

I am writting up the event. but here are some quick shots of it going in.

Getting Ready

June 4th is the launch date, so we are getting ready today. The grand kids have just 1 and a half hours of school today. When they get home we will run to Wal-Mart for an oil change and pick up snacks for the trip.

We are packing up "esentials" for the launch. I wonder where our priorities are as some of the esentials include a PSP and a Laptop. Well at least the laptop will be set up as a chart plotter using Sea Clear II free chartplotting software. http://www.sping.com/seaclear/ Somebody should complile that code for use on a Macintosh now that all macs are using the X86 Chipset. the PSP is to keep the 9 year old occupied while we are doing things during the launch that a 9 year old should not be involved in. One of those things is oporating the Boom Crane, though I am sure he thinks he could handle it.

The 15 year old got a new digital camera for his birthday this year and is tasked with documenting the whole process through pictures.

We will be driving up from champaign Illinois to Winnebago Illinois, about three hours, and then taking 10 years worth of accumulated stuff off of the boat. We will pack only what is needed for the launch this afternoon and head out for Mckinley Harbor, Milwaukee Wisconson early Wednesday morning.

Launch

We are launching on June 4^th.  We plan on being at McKinley ramps about 9 am.  If you want you can come and watch.  Or you can call the paramedics when stepping the mast goes horribly wrong.  

PHRF Cert Received

We got the PHRF Cert.   The number is just like it was 10 years ago.  Were not going say what it is, though.  That’s just how we roll.

Queens Cup, a race

So the Queens cup is a race form Milwaukee to Someplace in Michigan nearly due west across the Lake Michigan.  It is the last weekend of June.  At first we thought there was a life raft requirement for the race but it turns out that though a life raft is a good idea, it is not mandatory for the race.  Outside of that large obstacle the only prohibitive factor now is, well, cost.

We will need to decide if we are doing it and then start writing checks (inset cliché about sailboat ownership being like money holes in the water, or tearing up $100 bills in the shower here).

Launch Date

We are picking a launch date, in fact I think Dad already has one in mind and I just don’t know it.  We are hearing that Lake Michigan water levels are low, so we are hoping that at McKinley Harbor in Milwaukee has enough water to float the boat off of the trailer.  The boat only drafts about 4 feet, but there is a large beam on the trailer that we have to get over.

Still waiting for spring

Snow is forecasted for today. Gesh, when is spring gunna get here? In central Illinois there are a group of students from the university of Illinois Sailing Club that are going to clinton lake anyway. The will be cold. Theya re getting ready for a regatta at Northwesten University next weekend. The regatta that was going to happen a few weeks ago at Iowa was canx'd due to Ice.

The Big Boat is just waiting for nicer weather. Well that and the marinas in Milwaukee to open up.

When the boat goes in we will have to calibrate the new autohelm that was put in last summer and then try to get the GPS unit talking to it. but, there will be plenty of time for that.

Come on spring, we are waiting.

New Riggers

I have an FJ that was donated to the UofI Sailing Club. Parker and Dori are ready to go sailing!

PHRF Cert Rumor

So the rumor is that our PHRF Cert will be mailed on April 1st. um... APRIL 1ST! can you immagine the jokes that will insue if your Cert was issued on April Fool's Day?

I already have a few jokes, but I will save them as excuses when we fail to sail to our new rating.

LOL April Fools day, what are they thinking?!

New Look!

Thanks to Diana at custom Blog Designs for giving my blog a makeover! I really like the way it looks. Many custom atributes that make the blog uniqly mine.

You can read more about custom blog designs by following the link on the right side of this page, just under the hit counter.

This is the boat; in the water

I have gotten some feedback like, "hey there are no pictures of the boat". Well there are, you just gotta click on the "2007 posts" linky on the right hand side there.

For those of you who just wanna take a peek, here is the boat. these pics prove a number of things:

1) the boat floats

2) in moves under sail power

3) Graney pictures form the early 1990's don't scan well.

The Jacket

Sombody mentioned "those port and starboard jackets" and how corny the are. I was all like "Hey, I got one of those!" I wear it , really.

Here is the jacket, the sleeves are almost too short...... I don't know what happened to my neck in the picture, I usually have one. you can also tell that the jacket is original, circa 1975, check out the collar!

It's ok to laugh.

New Zealand!

I posted on another website (sailinganarchy.com) that no one from New Zealand had viewed my blog. Well now they have! Woot!

And it was also pointed out in the comments that if everyone from the east coast of the US and Canada keep viewing then we will tip the whole map to the right.

World Famous!

I have added a small app to the blog provided by statcounter.com Without invading anyones privacy it tells us from where people have viewed our blog. It turns out we are world famous! check out the map.

*we do not keep anyone's information, nor do we proved informatioin to any third party. Just the map and only the map.

Sailing Doo-Dads

Recently on a web forum I post at someone asked about Sailing Doo-Dads. You know all the sailing crap you have around the house, that isn't part of Actually sailing. Well I got a family room full of it. Since the web page I post at doesn't allow uploading of images, I thought I would put them here.

keep in mind, I didn't clean or anything before I took the pics, but this gives you an Idea of all the sailing stuff in my basement. I'll give a short description of each picture

stuff by he CDs and DVDs

PHRF Cert Applied for...

Well in preperation for the spring and summer season we are filling out the paperwork for the boats PHRF certificate.  This will give us a handicap number in an effort to levelize racing with boats that are note exactly the same.   In the past the boat rated a 132. We will get our cetificate here http://www.lmphrf.org/

 

I am hoping that we make the queens cup this year (http://www.ssyc.org/queenscup/default.asp), and some weekend races.

Thwarted by the weather

Looks like the weather is going to get in the way for the Friday trip From Champaign and Winnebago to Chicago.  We will try for Saturday.  If we can’t go Saturday then we will have to skip it this year as I am hosting a Super Bowl party on Sunday.

Going to Strictly Sail chicago

So on Friday we will be going to Stricktly Sail at Chicago's Navy pier.  I will take a lots of pics and post a few here. 

http://www.strictlysail.com/shows/chicago.asp

 

Test Post from eMail

I know a lot of people post to blogs via email.  I just never have turned it on, well not until now anyway.  Here is the first eMail post to the blog.

 

-Eric

Video! from 1995

So here is a vedio from 1995. I got around to moving the video from VHS to youtube.