Bristol-Blue Lake Michigan Sailing Adventures

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 channel.  This prompted us to keep a wide berth as

Aside from sailing blogs, here's what's been on my sailing related bookshelf these past few months. By the Way of the Wind and Swell are both interesting books. These ocean-going sailors have great experiences to share in their books.  Jim Moore and his newly married wife set off for the South Pacific in their hand-built boat and travel around the world.  It is quite a story set in the early 70's and ending in the early 80's. The book ends with them setting off from Hawaii on another sailing adventure. While it was a great story, it refers to many political occurrences that occurred before my time and while important seem trivial in many ways today.  There are a lot of descriptions of the weather and it can be a bit long at times. Reading this confirmed my desire to be a Great Lake sailor more than ever.  The length of time it takes to passages across oceans is just something I'd rather not do. Swell by Liz Clark is another story altogether.  Liz Clar

Not all things lost go to Davy Jones Locker.  This week I lost a halyard up the mast while I was taking some measurements. This thought occurred to me. What do you call a halyard stuck up at the top of your mast swinging around?  Perhaps a Jack Sparrow?  That guy is always swinging around from something in the movies.  There are several different ways to retrieve a lost halyard everything from fishing lines to running some sort of device to snag the line up another halyard. Most of these methods look to require quite a good bit of patience and time. The most straight forward way is to break out the bosun's chair and go up and get it.   Seems it is the spinnaker halyard and it is above and outside all the other halyards I decided to just go with the bosun's chair. It has been a while since I've been up a mast. This time I decided to make things a bit easier on myself and my wife down below by building an easy climber. Besides making the mast easier to climb I felt

Getting ready for the Venitian festival fireworks we pulled out the cushions and sat back and relaxed.  Hammock up too.

Biminis, preventing sun stroke on the water since. ...  times forgotten.  This week we have taken one step more towards cruising boat and one step away from racing boat. The recent heatwave has us thinking it's a long way out a sunny channel to get into the lake and it is not too shady out on Lake Michigan.  So, there are a few ways to go about this Bimini business. You can go the custom route get the parts, bend the tubing or have someone do this for you.  Can you say cha-ching, because the local canvas guy can see you coming.  Yeah, that's not the way I went. After much measuring and figuring, I decided to visit Amazon.com and find a prefab kit and modify from there.  I went with a 3 rib system that is 8ft wide by 6ft long.  8 by 8 would cover the entire cockpit but the mainsheet would interfere so there will be a 2ft area uncovered at the front of the cockpit perhaps someday I'll install a dodger to cover it as well.  Once I wrestled around and figured out w

Over the past few weeks, I've been reading about sail design and trim. I've been reading about loose footed mains and decided to give it a try.  Many sails are designed with a bolt rope in the bottom that holds the sail to the boom along the entire length. From what I have been reading this turns out to be a bit of holdover from the old cotton sail days wear ripping and tearing were an issue. Modern Dacron does not need this additional support and a lot of sailmakers are going to loose footed sails. The easiest way to try this out on your boat is to simply remove the bolt rope from your boom and see how it goes.   On the Mirage 24, I have been very impressed with the results so far.  Sail handling is much easier especially with regards to tensioning and loosening the outhaul. You can really tune your sails foil shape and so far I can not find a single reason not to do this.  Here is a nice video of us sailing along at 6K loose footed main  and150 genoa.  

The season has entered full swing. This week THYC had their kids day. We decided to spend the night aboard as a family. The wind scoop is one of my favorite things on the boat.  It just blows cool air right down the front hatch.   The club had games and crafts set up for the kids and we spent some serious time playing with the giant Jenga set. We decided before we do too much more camping on the boat it was time for some mosquito netting.  So I broke out the sewing machine this week and got busy.   I took a few short cuts with the netting instead of hemming all the edges I melted a few of them with the blow torch.  I think this will work just as well to preventing the Sunbrella from fraying and it saves some of my material for future projects. I decided to sew up a quick privacy curtain as well.  This will separate the main cabin from the head and V berth. To do this I used Sunbrella for the backing.  In Ann Arbor, there is a great shop called the Scrap Box.  They

We finally settled on a name for our Mirage 24. With much discussion and input (from the 10-year-old.) We have gone with Woodstock. Not the 60's music bash but the cute little yellow bird from the Peanuts. I found a great sign shop here locally and they printed these up for me $25.00 to do both port and starboard nameplates. I came down to the boat and stuck them right on.  First the starboard side then I pulled out of the dock and backed the boat into the slip, so I could do the port side.   Turns out I really like the boat backed into the slip. So I've been leaving it backed in. It makes it easier to leave the dock when it is just me sailing and it is a bit easier to get back into the slip as well.  Our third trip worked out well after I reassembled to boom gooseneck.  As I pulled up the mainsail the boom dropped right off. Turns out the thing had been assembled upside down. The pin had been pushed up and the nut was on the top and it worked it's way off. 

As we move from beer can racer to weekend cruiser there are a few things we are working to add to the boat. First off we are looking to fill out the galley. The boat is equipped with a sink and water tank.  So our thoughts are we need is a way to make some coffee. So I picked up this sweet german made alcohol stove. Off course it needs a little work. I pulled it apart and replaced all the o-rings and seal.  An afternoon well spent to ensure a safe working stove. Frame Cleaned up. Many of the seals were pretty hard and dried out from sitting. Packings for the valves were the trickiest part. Time for re-assembly.  One burner is a go. Flame on two burners. Hot coffee in 10 minutes or less. Yeah, alcohol burns hot.

So the P.O. of our Mirage was using it for club racing with his grandson on Lake St. Claire. Fun but we are planning a bit more relaxed sailing and have started making some modifications to allow for more extended weekending trips.   One of the first things I needed to do was sort out the mast lighting system. Coming down the mast he had two sets of wires run. The first set ran the masthead anchor light and the second set the steaming light. Coming through the deck there is only one port to be plugged into and the plug only matches the steaming light. So the anchor light simply had no place to go unless you hooked wires to in and stuffed them down the plug. This did not seem like a good long term solution. So it is time to get creative. I called my brother up, the electrical engineer and told him what I wanted. He sourced out the parts for me on Amazon and drew out a wiring diagram for me. I got to work wiring it up.  The results are a waterproofed 3-way switch located at the m

Last weekend we headed out with my parents for our second trip on our new to us 1976 Mirage. The winds were blowing from the east and most everyone out on the lake had their furlers reefed in. We sailed under main only and hit a new speed record of 6.4 knots.  This boat just zips along.  I need to get the reefing lines sorted out and figure out how they are all supposed to run. Something is telling me that with this tall rig mast I'm going to need to be reefing more often. Here are some great pictures from the day.  Wild blue yonder.  Myles was not too happy at the start of the trip.  This was his first experience with this boat heeling over and he was struggling with where to hold on.  As the day went on and he got more comfortable things improved.  Crewing today my Mom and Dad just back from their first retirement RV trip.  The return trip up the channel is great fun.