I've had my Ross Lillistone First Mate completed for about six months, but before today I've only had it out three times on a vacation and that was just for pleasure sailing. For a while I've wanted to get hard data on how the boat performs so I can better plan some camp cruising adventures for next summer. Monday 10/28 seemed like a nice day, possibly one of the last opportunities of this year, so I set an out of the office auto email and went sailing.
In my rush to get the boat ready for the vacation back in May, there were a lot of odds and ends that didn't work all that well but weren't bad enough to prevent me from using the boat. So I had a few days of repairs to do and then I re-rigged everything to make sure it all works. Furling the sail around the sprit works pretty well, but a brail line has shot to the top of the new list of things to improve.
I spent two evenings fitting a trailer hitch and wiring to my car so I can pull the boat to various nearby ramps. Probably look ridiculous and my mileage drops from 44 to about 28. Fortunately I don't have to go far.
There is a nice boat ramp on Windmill Point at the mouth of the Rappahannock that I've launched other boats from. Like I said, this was primarily a data gathering trip, so I recorded my GPS track with a really lightweight and simple phone app called GPS Logger from BasicAirData. It took a while to find a no frills app that didn't want me to make an account somewhere.
Here's a satellite view of the area and my track for the day. You can see the marina at the tip of Windmill Point that I launched from. I grew up sailing around here in a 70's era Sunfish I bought with grass cutting money. Making day trips to Parrott island, Mosquito island, and Grog island or just around the bridge and back was how I'd spend summers. Sadly, Grog island has washed away and is no more.
And here is the data I collected. GPS track, speed vs time, wind speed and direction, and tide. The winds started out pretty blustery in the morning, but they were down to 10-15 by the time I launched at 10am. Then later around 6pm pretty light to nonexistent. My total trip was 32.7 miles in just under 8 hours.
From the GPS track I calculated tacking angles as best I could. The wind was pretty light on the return trip and the better tacks were when the wind picked up. I have no idea whether these are good, bad or indifferent. The 122.77º tack was when I had a terrible crease in the sail though. Making the snotter and downhaul run back to the cockpit is also high on the list of improvements.
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