Saturday, January 28, 2012

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

I'm only posting this pic because of the nuts

This picture is from the slapdash blog. They are Canadians sailing a Gemini Catamaran around the world. Someone should tell the Canadians that here in our country, we need to put oil in the gas for chainsaws!
I think these are the nuts and bolts that go to the grabrail. 3Sum has some mighty fine sh*tty screws that immediately popped out when we grabbed the rail. Lisa and I have debated about how to fix it. I want to do it right, but we probably will do it Lisa's way - that is, no holes in the boat! My Mighty Putty patchwork from this summer didn't work so hot. The latenight infomercial convinced me that it was a good product and would do a great job in holding the screws in place. 

Note the Canadian drill that I'm sure doesn't need oil in the gas. This offhanded, non boat-related rant started with me lending  my good Stihl chainsaw to a passing Canadian a couple years ago. He thought it was a Canadian chainsaw and they don't put oil in their gas up there, or so he told me.  My chainsaw that I was going to pass down to my heirs got shredded no thanks to Canada!

If you ever wake up one day and realize you are a Canadian and you stop by my place to borrow my chainsaw, you will get a severe and VERY stern disturbing glance tossed in your general direction and I will probably hurl a guttural racist remark like, "go back to your toquewearing, Moosehead beer drinking, back-bacon eating, chocolate milk drinking country and learn to speak English!" Come to think of, nothing ever good came out of Canada except for Rush, Martin Short, John Candy, Alex Trebek, Pamela Anderson, Canada Dry, back bacon, all Molson products, and that arm thing that was on the space shuttle. That arm thing was cool and wish they had one for home use. It would be quite practical when you are sitting on the couch wanting a beer or some backbacon from the fridge, you pic up your TV remote, hit the big "Canadian Arm Getting Device" button and the Canadian Arm Getting device would get it for you. 
Nowhere in this picture does it state the arm requires oil.


Midweek and no sailing

So, I thought I would post another pic ripped off from the Slapdash blog of them sailing a gemini somewhere in the Pacific (I guess you could call their location in the middle of the nonspacific.



Saturday, January 21, 2012

Joining the regatta. We are creeping up on them silently.


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







Animated Logo


We've had better speed.


Another LisaVid


Kikn sum @ss


Joining the regatta with no invite


Either my droid isn't working right, or we still are out on the water


View 1/21/12 12:50 PM in a larger map

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.

Insane Boat Docking

Worm Boat Docking

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Pic from Slapdash blog - sailing around the world in a Gemini

I've started reading this blog after getting caught up on the Zero to Cruising blog. These guys have the catamaran made by Performance Cruising who made our Telstar. Plus, I just like pictures of fish stuck in things at weird angles.

Ice Boating on Lake Minnetonka

Looks like the Maloneys from Shorewood Yacht Club were getting their winter sailing fill in on this day. They lose the mast in the end. They are kind of like the Duke boys of Minnetonka.

Costa Concordia disaster

Animation of the sinking of the Cost Concordia
This is what happens when you don't buy your boat from the Tackle Shack! The Tackle Shack sales guy (below) probably sees this kinda thing hundreds of times a day! "We just throw them cruise liners away out back."
"You don't know a damn thing!"
Hobie sales rep telling this customer that "they don't know a damn thing!" We approached this guy earlier in the day at the St. Pete Boat Show in Nov 2010, and said we had water getting into the hull of our hobie adventure island. We figured we had a leaky seal since the water was not that bad. 

He asked where we bought it and we said we bought it used from a guy down in Ft. Myers. He was convinced that since we were so stupid and naive to not buy it from him, that it must be a lemon. He said our problem was that we put the drivetrain in wrong and punched a hole in the boat.  He said he sees this all the time and that we should just take it to the dump. Seriously! We basically wanted to spend money here, but he was so condescending and obnoxious, we left.

As a side note, we went to his store in the summer of 2011 and ran into him again. I casually mentioned about putting a screecher on the front of our hobie and again, the "hobies'll snap in half. Not designed for that. I see it all the time and we take em out back to the dump."

I really like hobies and they have a great product, but the people we have dealt with over the years have not been very good.