Bristol-Blue Lake Michigan Sailing Adventures

Spinnaker Socks are super nice for launching and recovering your spinnaker.  My last two boats have had them and after using one the benefits are clear. 1st off, sail handling is much easier especially if you're short-handed. 2nd, safety spinnaker socks let you launch and recover your spinnaker without everything being perfectly packed in a turtle bag another word fewer things to tangle up keeps it safer. Woodstock does not have one so we have not used the Spinnaker yet and our trip to Lake Mac last week would have been the ideal time to use a Spinnaker.  So it is time to look into this.  $17.00 per foot x 28 ft =$476 plus tax.  Hum lets go see what's in the garage.  Any past readers remember this old post Boom Tent   Well this is one sewing project that didn't work out. However, I still have the material sitting here on a shelf and it is light enough and long enough to make into a sock. Now just to find one of those fancy fiberglass hoops they use to ...

This morning we ate breakfast at the dock and set out around 9:30 which means by the time we got to the lake it was around 10 AM.  The wind was just starting to build in real slowly this morning. It was blowing straight from the south. We sailed up the wind northwest and then back to the northeast.  It would have been an amazing spinnaker run.  However, I decided to error on the side of caution. With just me and the kiddo aboard I didn't want to do a spinnaker set on this boat for the 1st time on my own.  We made it to Lake Macatawa around 1:00 in the afternoon.  Did I mention it was not very breezy?   6.4 knots was our max speed and we averaged 4.5. It was a great day out on the lake and we made it back to Tower  by 4 PM.  Here we are hanging out on the foredeck while the tiller clutch does the driving.  In this picture, you can just see the caution marks for the dredge operation going on at the mouth of the channe...