The Sailboat Thread!

[CarlD]

Ok, let's get this straight: Swimming pools have water. Sailboats sail on water. Most sailboats are fiberglass or have a gel-coat. Lots of pools are made of fiberglass. We only deal with outdoor pools, and I never heard of a sailboat you sailed indoors!

So how far off topic are we really?

I await the arrival of my little inflatable sailboat/kayak/towable/windsurfer. Of course, my wife thinks I'm stark raving mad, 'round the bend, or as my son puts it, ready for the rubber room!

I've had so few opps to sail, but I always love it. I don't know why motors on boats leave me cold. I love 'em on bicycles, especially when they have 4 cylinders and pump out 125 to 130 hp at the rear wheel, but not on boats (well, boats less than 5,000 ton displacement).

We cruise a lot and they always say "It's not a boat, it's a SHIP!" Oh yeah? Then why for 10 or 15 years did the Dawn Princess star on "The Love Boat" (yawn)? (or was it the Island Princess?)

So let's move the sailing and other boat stuff here!

[sailork]

Well let's see if I can get things started here with an enthusiastic yacht race post!

I'm going to be involved in a very long yacht race tommorrow. It's supposed to be very light wind and hotter'n heck. As usual the UV index will be "10+ extreme" according to weather.com. If I post anything on Sunday it will probably be sunstroke addled nonesense, please forgive.

[MaryLee]

Oh yeah? Then why for 10 or 15 years did the Dawn Princess star on "The Love Boat" (yawn)? (or was it the Island Princess?)

I hate that I even know this but.....it's the Pacific Princess.....boy am I a geek

[sailork]

Now see MaryLee you're trying to hijack this thread. If you were talking about the Minnow and Gilligan's Island then it would be "on topic."

I mean, everybody knows we all dress like Thursten Howell the 3rd when sailing in regattas.

Those blue blazers are wicked hot in the summertime..

[CarlD]

I hate that I even know this but.....it's the Pacific Princess.....boy am I a geek

I KNEW somebody would take the bait!

I had no idea. I broke more than one TV's channel changer getting it OFF "The Love Boat"--You just couldn't turn those things so hard! Then, when remotes became come, you'd bust the up-channel key!

I probably saw 5 to 10 minutes more of Love Boat in all the years it was on than I did of its sole-mate "Fantasy Island". If between the two of them I saw enough to add up to one episode, that'd be a lot. Wasn't there a guy named "Chipmunk" or "Groundhog" or "Prairie Dog" who got elected to Congress?

[CarlD]

Back on topic I'm looking for this inflatable to show up. Maybe my older boy and I can take it to a lake and try it out! Even kayaking in it should be fun.

But I've wanted to learn to sail for 12 years now, and only know just a little.

I've played with celestial navigation--it's really cool to figure out where you are with a watch and an almanac and a chart, not to mention a sextant. No GPS needed!

[Phillbo]

I'm a GPS / Autopilot snob on long passages( to me a long passage so far has only been about 2.5 days ) . Sextant is use as back up.

[sailork]

Carl, You might look around at some of the dingy class boats that are available. You can generally find working Sunfish and even larger boats for cheap (or even free..) if you watch craigslist.org etc. It's a great sport for kids because it's fun and there's a tremendous amount of physics and physical skill involved.

or you could buy a remote controlled sailboat and sail it around the pool..

[sailork]

Phillbo, we don't have a sextant or an autopilot on board. We're always racing or returning when we're offshore so there are bunches of people we can reach by VHF. The longest passage I've ever made was Galveston to South Padre and back by way of Aransas last year. It's probably over 1000 miles through the water. That was on somebody else's boat. The way I see it a J/105 is too wet and cramped for long passagemaking.

[CarlD]

"a remote controlled sailboat...."

That just doesn't quite cut it!

If you have a sextant as a backup, do you regularly practice with it to be sure you can do a sight-reduction? (correctly, that is!) If not, put the sextant up on eBay! I have a number of them. For a while you could buy aircraft periscope sextants (really octants) for as little as $50. The gummint paid about $2500/per for these in the '60s' and they were installed in B-52's. In Dale Brown's "Flight of The Old Dog" the hero, a bombadier, wants his sextant back...

The periscope sextants are incredibly beautiful pieces, with the 'scope section filled with nitrogen so it wouldn't condense on the inside when exposed to the brutally cold wind out the top of a B-52 at 40,000 feet!

Then there are the left-handed sextants--

But you can get a Davis plastic sextant for about $40 and can sail around the world with it--as long as you have an accurate watch and a current nautical almanac.

Or you can use ANY hand-held GPS. They all pump out Lat/Long and you can use that on a chart.

A really cool site to buy nav stuff is :
www.Celestaire.com Some stuff is horribly over-priced, but other stuff is really reasonable. I was poking around there when I saw the inflatable sailboat....Should arrive today!