Tag Archives: Catalina 22

Sale boat, gone

Posted on March 21, 2009 | Comments Off on Sale boat, gone

Alan Sullivan’s comment (long since deleted, alas) on Hunter sailboats makes me laugh:

"Their boats are very curvaceous. They were designed to titillate heterosexual men, who constitute an overwhelming majority of yacht buyers. Specifically, they appeal to the type of man who picks a babe for a wife, without wondering how she’ll perform over the long haul."

Of course, he was talking about the Hunter 41, whereas my puddleduck was much smaller, just 22 feet, and it was a Catalina, so it was solidly-built rather than curvaceous. A better boat all around, I think. And you would, too, if you owned one.

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly

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Lake Travis plunge

Posted on February 4, 2009 | Comments Off on Lake Travis plunge

Having sold the family sloop, we no longer pay much attention to the ups and downs of the reservoir called Lake Travis. It has been quite low in previous droughts, but seems to be trying to set a new record in the ongoing one. It is now at six hundred and fifty-five feet below above mean sea level, which is roughly twenty-six feet below normal. Worse, it is forecast to continue its plunge to around six hundred and twenty feet. 

Nevertheless, in the interest of soothing hysterics who worry about the droughts of global warming (though it is the potential rising of sea water rather than the falling of lake surfaces that has them upset), this has happened before, and quickly (say, within thirty days) has come back to this. So, in other words, unless you own a lakeside home (which is now a gully-side home) there’s almost certainly nothing to worry about. What goes down has, historically, come right back up.

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Posted in Sailing, Texana, Weather/Climate

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Of tile and sailboats

Posted on October 15, 2008 | Comments Off on Of tile and sailboats

The money I got for the family sloop last month yesterday paid for new adobe-colored, porcelain ceramic tile for the rancho’s family room. It looks good. Photo to come. Coincidentally, minutes after we got all the furniture back in place, Colby, the sloop’s new owner and neophyte sailor called to chat about his latest experiences.

He’s been trying to sail with just the main hoisted, easing into learning the art, and was curious why he didn’t seem to be making any headway on a recent gusty day. He was trying to beat, or sail upwind, at least as close as he could get to the direction of the wind, but he seemed almost to be going backward. I told him he needed to hoist the jib to beat. Running and reaching work fine with just the main. To beat he needs the "slot" that the jib creates between it and the mainsail, which keeps the boat in balance and the bow pointed as high into the wind as it will go. At least he finally got the Mercury outboard going. Its fuel lines seemed to be clogged from disuse. Now it runs fine.

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Sailing

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Sailboat sale

Posted on September 23, 2008 | Comments Off on Sailboat sale

Tom, OCS buddy and rare reader who cannot make the TypeKey comment system work, reminds me that I have not written much about sailing this year. The reason is I haven’t been doing much of it since April, for various reasons, mostly involving rancho chores, family travel and driving Mr. B. around to baseball, summer camp and, now, basketball and Cub Scouts.

In fact, the family sloop has been for sale for a few weeks and last Sunday I picked up two interested buyers. Am waiting on a local fellow to get his money together (he has to sell some stock, and this is not a good time for that, obviously), while the other one, from northeast Texas, says he is ready to buy it if the local one doesn’t. If Mr. B. enjoyed going sailing, I would have kept it, but, alas, he doesn’t. On one of our few outings, he pointed at a passing stinkpot (motorboat) and said: “Why don’t we buy one of those, Dad?” Sigh.

UPDATE: The sloop is sold. Feel a little bit sorry already, but that’s relieved by the young, local  buyer’s enthusiasm and excitement. It’s in good hands–younger and more energetic ones, too.

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Posted in Mr. Boy, Rancho Roly Poly, Sailing

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Outboard again

Posted on February 10, 2008 | Comments Off on Outboard again

Good sail this afternoon. Partly cloudy, warm, gusty 5-15 mph winds. Just cruising along. It’s a good thing I kept my outboard engine maintenance manual, because I bought a new Mercury 2.5 hp yesterday from regular reader Steve who keeps a Hunter sloop on my dock at Anderson Mill. I gave the trolling motor a try, but it proved to be a bigger headache than an outboard. Maybe. It seems like forever since that fateful day before Thanksgiving that I found that the trolling motor didn’t have enough oomph to stop the sloop going backward and drive it forward, and so the sloop kept going backward and crashed into the dock behind mine close to the shoreline. With all the cold and rain since then, and almost six weeks of cedar pollen in the air keeping me inside, I’ve had time to think it over and decided to go back to an outboard. Even the 2.5 easily made the sloop reverse direction this afternoon, and then gallop out of the marina into a headwind.

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Posted in Sailing

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Family sloop’s free scrub

Posted on November 5, 2007 | Comments Off on Family sloop’s free scrub

Steve, a rare reader who recently bought a used Hunter 22 sloop at Anderson Mill was using scuba gear to inspect his new craft’s bottom Sunday and afterwards swam down a few slips to check ours. Said scrubbing the algae off revealed clean blue paint from the cleaning job we got done at Commander’s Point in the fall of 2001, and the swing keel and cable looked fine. Appreciate it, Steve. Sorry the motor isn’t behaving. Steve picked up the recalcitrant Suzuki DT4 I left at the dumpster not long ago and paid for some fixup. It ran a while for him, even idled okay, but then it quit and refused to start. Good luck with that. I hope finally to get the new trolling motor working this week.

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Posted in Sailing

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Six gauge follies

Posted on October 31, 2007 | Comments Off on Six gauge follies

To get the new trolling motor’s power lead to the midships battery on the family sloop requires extending it about eight feet with six gauge wire, according to the manual. I got the wire at Lowe’s easy enough. but then the fun began. Lowe’s doesn’t sell six gauge insulated ring terminals to attach the wire to the battery. Actually to the circuit breaker, at least for the positive wire. The negative can go directly to the battery. Why in the world would they sell the wire but not the terminals to use it? Home Depot? Nope. A contractor friend suggested Nunn’s Electric Supply here in Austin. They didn’t have six gauge terminals either. They suggested Grainger industrial supply. They had them, alright, but couldn’t sell me any smaller amount than a box of twenty. So now I’m fixed for long-term electrical work–as long as I use six gauge wire.

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Posted in Sailing

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