Memorial Day 2015 Sail on Tampa Bay

Our new vid from our sail over the weekend. It was HOT!! Lots of chop and not much wind. We were lazy hence the topping lift and lazy jacks still attached. The music is cheesy, but it isn't copyrighted, so that is a good thing. 

Sailing Tampa Bay with the Leone's, Sean and Mattie. Then Added the Lewis' for Lunch

Some boat sailing by us.

Rose Leone at the helm

Rose still at the helm.

Jen, Sean and Mark. I wanted Sean to stay in the car, but they were afraid I would get reported for leaving a Martinson in the car unattended with the windows rolled up. Being the kind guy I am, we kept him hydrated with Coronas. 

Mark in charge.  

Lunchtime panorama.

Morphed pic of Rose ad Mark. 

After a couple cool ones, the Lewis' clan head out. Ozzie was making sure there were no icebergs.

Saturday started out with little wind and I was hoping we weren't going to have to drop the iron genny, but the winds picked up to about 18 and we had a great ride. 3SUM sailed great with no major problems except me bringing her in and wanting to show Mark what the dock looked like quickly and up close. No major damage. I need a new system for bringing her in. We have 4 foot finger piers and with a strong wind on the starboard stern and nothing to really keep her from moving about, it is quite difficult to get her in. 

International Telstar Owners Association • View topic - Single Hand Extending and Retracting Amas

International Telstar Owners Association • View topic - Single Hand Extending and Retracting Amas

Weird cloud formation

Took this picture before getting on 3SUM. It started raining pretty hard right afterward. Looked like a building was on fire, but actually just a weird cloud. 

Nasty St. Pete Weather

This storm lasted for about a half hour and had quite a laser lightning show.

Sunset in St. Petersburg

Pictures from my evening walk.

View from my backyard while sitting on the deck. 

Ok, I fixed it

I finally got around to fixing the throttle handle that came loose earlier when we were docking and had wind on our behind. Docking it was a bit tricky as I tried to keep the handle engaged. Looks like the screw in the handle on the backside came loose. A 5 minute repair (quite shorter for a competent person).

The rube rats a few boats down thought it was pretty funny that we had trouble getting into our slip while slamming down their Miller Lites (I suppose to keep under that 300 lb mark). The admiral was on the bow and made a comment as we were going in, "well at least we aren't afraid to go out when the wind gets above   5 knots."

I think Lee and I are going to have to double team and remove those huge nail that are sticking out of the bollards. What a stupid place for them! I need to do some line maintenance and fenderboarding to make tying up 3SUM easier.

Finished up and went to Publix to get some food and water and when I came back, 7 of St. Pete's finest squad cars were there. Some type of domestic on one of the boats as I came up. Thank God we didn'thave to put up with Disco Stu and his all night jam session from the apartment building 5 blocks away! "Woop woop. Give it up for duh Man! Who wants to PAHHH-TAAYY!!!! Give it up foe mah Man -
FLO - RI-DA!"

New Year's Eve Tree Display

Flying the Jolly Roger

Lisa S. on 3SUM

Our BFFFN (Best Friend from Nowthen) Lisa S. showing her thrill on being with us on 3SUM. 

My New Book Cover - Now I just have to think of a story to write

I think this book is probably going to be one of the best books I haven't written just by judging the cover!

3SUM IS Getting her bottom scraped

absolutely. no wind

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Today's sail

This big old plane buzzed us on the way to MacDill AFB. 

This knucklehead in a big powerboat with his girlfriend he was trying to impress came right at our bow and at the last minute, veered and roared away. Tampa Bay is pretty big so he had plenty of room to avoid us. What a knob. 

Not a good deal of wind. Stayed around 5-8 k. We managed to snag a crabpot and that was the big excitement. We finally added the right shackle to the mainsail and had much better sailshape. Probably are going to need to get the hull cleaned as it was pretty filthy with marine growth.

Bit of a Nasty 3.4 foot short Chop with 16 k gusting to 26 knots

The racers didn't seem to mind, but it seemed their markers kept moving - or we did. We had to sail through their fleet a couple times. 

After sailing, we had Cheese WOW! Not only was it delicious on a triscuit - it was also a Great Value! TheTriscuit B*ch enjoyed this. 

Paleta Payaso gives a Thumbs UP to Cheese Wow!

Today's Short Sail

View 2/17/12 1:23 PM in a larger map We got to St. Pete and entered into the "No Wind and Misting" zone. We bummed around the area, went over to Progress Field and watched Northwestern lose to West Virginia 4-2 and then headed back to 3Sum - the bird feces dumping ground. That's when we heard the horn and the "No Race" flag from St. Pete Sailing come down and the NOOD fleet take off. We followed them out and ran into minor issues with a fender and a batten, but other than that, had a nice quick sail until it started raining. We dodged a couple Fox 18 beach cats that were racing and these guys were good and fast. Really fast Even more fast when they rounded the mark and through up their spinnakers. It was quite impressive to see these people racing, but hard to see these people racing with the rain and all. We headed back in time to join all our other traffic jam friends trying to eek through Tampa.

We caught this boat quite quickly. They didn't have much for sails.

Great day on the Bay and Sailing with Real Sailors in a Regatta

We had seen there was a regatta going on in the bay and when we left the marina, we spotted them out in the distance. We sailed out to see what the hubbub was and decided it would be fitting to join them. Being the courteous sailors we are, we decided to stay clear of them as they rounded their mark and sailed about a 1/4 mile away from them. One boat on a port tack cut in front of our starboard tack and was kind enough to tell Lisa that she needs to "stay your course." We actually ducked behind the guy because I don't think he realized that we were doing about 6 knots compared to his 3 or 4 and we were close to ramming him.

He continued on his way and we did a tack after he was a good piece in front of us. We shortly passed the entire fleet as we got up around 7.5 knots in about a 12 knot wind. Not too shabby as we were at about 60 degrees to the wind and we weren't trying.

All in all, it was a successful day sailing. And then the docking. Little problem with the docking as the wind was on our aft starboard side and blew us into the boat next to ours. I managed to fend it off and Lisa was kind enough to give me some tips on what I should do next time in a similar situation. We now have a new plan involving a spring line that we will try so we don't have that happen again. 3Sum is fairly light and gets blown a bit more than a monohull in situations like that.

3Sum sails much better on Tampa Bay than it ever did on Lake Minnetonka. I don't know if it is because of the conditions or some of the work I put into her this summer.

St. Pete New Year 2012.

First view of 2012. 

Coast Guard and 50 caliber on bow is convincing evidence to pull over.

Laminate sails.

3Sum at night.

Tiki Bar Boat

A MacGregor with a 70 hp motor. 

I'm thinking the owners must be a lot of fun.'

Fresco's near Pier was excellent!

9 pm fireworks.

Lisa making a delicious and nutritious breakfast in our spacious galley.

Fresco's

Southern Cross is for Sale at $147,000.

Hunter 23 in background ready to go out for a sailing lesson. I could use some brush up points. 

78 foot monohull folded in half.

 A fitting shirt for our former neighbor, Bob The Man  Herman. 

Whole lotta watta and notta lotta wind.

Lisa's cutesy pic. 

And, some photo pushing via piknik.

Old fart thinking he is cool.

Albert Whitted airfield. 

Me taking a picture of a guy taking a picture. 

Not sure why this is posted here. Just a boat on the water.