Truly bumming

No work got done on Kintala this weekend, none, nadda, not a single blessed thing was fixed, adjusted, repaired, replaced, sanded, stained or polished. We were bumming for sure. We told everyone that, after last weekend's flogging, we had decided to spend some quality time just enjoying what is, after all, a pretty neat boat. (The truth is the parts we had ordered for this weekend haven't come in yet. But we can keep that just between us.)

It was a late start for me heading out for the lake on Friday as there was a small brush-fire at the office that needed tamped down. Once at the boat it seemed proper to just hang around with the assembled and enjoy. Though it wasn't very late when we retired to the boat, for some people there are nights that bring sleep and other nights that don't. I'm one of those people and Friday night was one of those nights that don't. Around 4 am the prisms in the v-berth started flashing; a sure sign of weather inbound. A quick look at the RADAR suggested a short hit, which it was. But there was a ton of rain in it and the parts that didn't show up? That was the stuff needed to put a new gasket in the hatch over my side of the berth. Pressing towels and a plastic picnic table cover into service kept me from having to sleep in the wet spot. Strangely enough, in the midst of the storm I fell asleep...not to stir until nearly 10 in de morning. Still being a bum and loving it.

Deb was long moving by the time I groaned my way into the day. Good wind was blowing whitecaps onto the lake so off we went. Over the next 3 hours or so we tacked the boat 11 times, roughly once every 16.3 minutes. With winds gusting past 20 knots we started the day flying just part of the jib, a staysail on the cutter rig, and put a single reef in the main. Here's what it takes to tack Kintala with all that canvas grabbing wind:

Center the Main:
Take one turn off the loaded jib-sheet wench / put two turns on the lazy sheet:
Tack the boat past a beam reach to get the wind's help in getting the jib around the inner forestay: (This got even more important latter in the day - with dying winds we rolled the screacher all the way out and shook the reef out of the main.)

Get a rough trim on the jib:
Bring her head back up to the wind:
Throw the working sheet of the now back-winded staysail / get another rough trim:
Go forward to get the now windward baby stay and rig it aft:
Cross the boat / get the now leeward baby stay / rig it forward:
Trim the main:
Trim the jib:
Trim the staysail:
Watch the boat go like hell:
Run out of lake / do it all again.

Yep, bumming it for sure.