All those shoals

My friend Lani rightly pointed out that calm weather is better for learning the currents, since they're not hiding behind wind-driven waves. Here's a screen shot from webapp.navionics.com. I just discovered that the little blue and white button in the bottom left corner shows more contour line intervals. 

This is the area I'm sailing in. I expect that the yellow area is never submerged, and the green area is what you see at the lowest tides.

This is where Ramana and I sailed for an hour or so, staying in one place, wind and current in equal opposition (little red boat):

Wind indicator, jib sheet leads, tide rips & wind thieves

On Saturday morning I made myself a mast-head wind indicator:

It's a long triangle of light sail cloth with the short side captured between two thin pieces of wood. A hole was drilled through the wood, and a screw attaches it to the end of a dowel, loosely enough that it spins. I found the design in Small Craft Advisor mag. As well as showing wind direction it also shows wind strength, to a degree, by how flat-out the pennant flies.

Saturday's sail was mostly a drifter, with a half-hour or so of light winds (see above video). The wind indicator is really nice to have, especially in light airs. The boat does well in light airs, as long as she's sailed with sheets eased, as they say; not pointing very high, in other words. Goes very well downwind.

Sunday was supposed to be cloudy and windy, but ended up sunny and even less windy than Saturday, so I came in early. One thing I did do out there was to make a new jib lead setup:

It's a continuous loop with a ring on it for the lead. This means I can move the lead whenever I want, from the cockpit, without having to re-tie everything. Pretty obvious, now!

I'm still finding the right spot for these leads. More wind would help.

 

I've been learning about tidal rips lately. Below is a little video of some very strong current just west of Emily Islet, the right-hand rock. I was powering back to the bay after being carried away by the current. When the current took me down, it didn't look like this, and it was a slow ride. And now look! You can see, starting at around 40 seconds in, that the boat starts getting tossed about by the current. I split off the audio 'cause it was just the buzzing of the engine.

Here's what the tide chart looked like for that particular moment:

This is from Mr. Tides (Mac only).

Wind Thieves!

These guys go out in the morning and steal all the wind, so by the time we afternooners get out there, it's all used up!

That's Phil on the left, and Andrew on the right. Someone should make them observe decent hours, I say!

Sun and rain

Phil was out early on Monday and got the good wind:

I left the dock just after Phil returned, by which time the wind was gone. 

But it was nice and sunny!

So I motored up to Cadboro Bay, went inside the R.V.Y.C. breakwater, through the anchorage, and then headed back. This is entering the bay with the yacht club in the distance off the port bow:

As I returned the wind filled in again, from the north, and it rained. I raised main and jib, cut the motor, and ran back to the marina.

I didn't set the mizzen, though, because I've found that, on a run, the mizzen makes for a heavy weather helm (in stronger winds, anyway). I read somewhere that, running downwind in a yawl, you want to have one of the sails (I think it was the mizzen) set to windward, and that'll take away the weather helm and also give the main clear air. Maybe something else about the air flow.... Anyway, this mizzen would be ideal for that because it's sheeted to both sides, so can be held to windward. I'll have to try it.

A number of firsts lately:

☸ first sails in Oak Bay  ☸ first sail in the rain  ☸ first time going forward on the leeward side of the boat while sailing (hadn't put the port jib sheet through its lead)—felt totally safe but probably wouldn't have done it if the wind were any stronger! (should have gybed first in any event)  ☸ first time sailing all the way into the slip (jib alone) ☸ first time seeing Cadboro Bay from the water.  ☸ although I've been on the water on the coast a fair bit, this is the first time I've sailed in an area with so much current  ☸ and kelp beds!  ☸ and reefs!  ☸ too much more to list...

I'm finding that the Oak Bay marina is a supportive environment, since it's a hub for so many others with the same desire to be on or at least near the water. There's always someone going or coming back from sailing, fishing, or just messing about in a boat. I think this could be Martin:

And the marina itself seems to be often busy and bustling; so many people, all doing different things—their own trips—but all to do with a passion for boats and/or the water.

Water people are different, I find. I met quite a few when I lived aboard in False Creek; it felt then much like a tribe. People would ask about so and so, whom they last saw in such and such a bay up-island; or someone would tell another to say hi to a person they both knew, who might be somewhere on the path the person will be taking...  always an underlying sense of camaraderie, of shared experience.

☸

Right now I'm thinking of making a junk sail for the mizzen, like Dag Goering's Vivacity has:

I can't have a junk main because the mast on Firefly is too far forward. (I might like a gaff, though.) But first I might try a larger jib. I'm thinking that a larger jib isn't going to bring the centre of effort any farther forward than the present small jib, since it's set on the same forestay, so it wouldn't affect the helm. But I think that the extra overlap would add power to the rig. What I'd like is a flat jib with roller reefing. Please post a comment if you think I'm wrong and need correction on this point of the CE. Thanks!  -e.

Drifter

These photos are from BigWaveDave's Willows Beach webcam from Thursday, showing our foggy day putter. The site remembers the last week's images.

 

Andrew, Godfrey and I motored out close to Cattle Point, then sat around and jawed while the current took us part way back to the marina. We could see eelgrass and crabs on the bottom, some 10' to 16' below us. 

The fog was offshore, but looked like it could close in any moment. No wind for sailing, anyway.

 Andrew said that the water was clear because there had been no rain or strong wind recently to stir things up.

When we backed out of the slip at the marina the boat was skewing sharply one way and then another as I frantically tried to correct with both the motor and the rudder. The boards weren't in, so that may have made a difference, and I think that having three guys in the cockpit probably had a lot to do with it as well.

Jib sheet leads again

Looks like the string theory worked! hahaha!

The jib looks like it's filling fine and not leech-flapping. I'll have a better idea when there's more wind to test in. Sorry to cut off the music like that!

Ramana and I had a nice sail on Sunday. We ended up sailing along against the current and not really going anywhere, which was just fine, as it was such a nice day. As Phil said, "It's not just perfect out there, it's more than perfect out there today." He had tied up already as we were just arriving.

Jib sheet leads

I'm experimenting

with a plastic ring

and a piece of string:

The string runs from the chainplate to the side cleat. I put the ring on it where I thought would be a good spot for the jib sheet lead. I'm thinking that I like the lead down lower and not on the cabin top. To change the location of the ring, I can move it along the string to wherever I want it, and I can also tighten up the string to bring the ring closer to the deck if I want.

I'm thinking I may end up with a ring attached to the gunnel with webbing, similar to how I used the rings elsewhere. But maybe this system above will prove just as good or better... we'll see. I found that, although the ring ends up above the centre of the deck, I could still walk forward stepping through it. I like that I can walk forward on the side decks on this boat without the boat feeling at all tippy; and that I can stand on the foredeck without even thinking that this is just a 16' boat. Can't do that on a Wayfarer, which is 1" longer. (Lots the Wayfarer can do that Firefly can't, but we won't get into that. )

Massive walrus haul-out

"Near Port Lay Alaska, over 35,000 Pacific walruses have hauled out onto dry land because they are unable to find sea ice due to global warming."

Photo: Corey Accardo/AP

More: http://thescuttlefish.com/2014/10/huge-walrus-haul-out-signals-latest-canary-in-the-coalmine-for-climate-change-in-the-arctic/

"The crowding at Port Lay is so severe, that the U.S. has taken action by re-routing flights to help avoid a deadly stampede on the thin strip of land."

Gravity reveals sea floor

Scientists have mapped the ocean floor from space in unprecedented detail—using gravity.

gcaptain.com/scientists-map-ocean-floor-space-unprecedented-detail/

© Scripps Institution of Oceanography

(In case you're wondering what this has to do with the Firefly blog, gCaptain is a blog I follow. I'll be sharing items from different blogs here (not just gCaptain) that aren't strictly related to Firefly herself, but which do relate to water, the oceans, boats, et cetera.  -e.)