photo credit: mindfrieze

There weren’t a lot of sailing posts this year, but there was a lot of sailing.  The absolute best day was my bachelor party sailing trip, which ended up being the most gorgeous day of the summer.  The boat was overloaded with friends and beer — a great combination.  The wind held and the water was flat.  It was perfect.  Then there was the first day Lisa and I took the boat out together, without any other experienced sailors.  Lisa did a great job at the helm.

We’re planning a trip south this winter for some tropical sailing.  I hope we can make it work.  Otherwise, I’ll be content dreaming about the spring, when we motor out, raise the mast, and start dodging Seadog again.

photo credit: John Picken

We learned a number of things:

• The racing main isn’t be best night sail.  It’s trickier to hoist and drop which add a little extra element of danger Justin and I probably didn’t need.  That and it’s gray.  If it not for the nav lights, we were the stealth boat.
• Boat lights closer to shore are tremendously hard to distinguish from the normal clutter of lights in the loop.  Is that a boat or a biker?
• Ditto for channel marking lights — when they exist.  We spent the last half of our sail aiming for the Monroe’s south entrance only to find out when we got there, we had been aiming at traffic lights.  Slipping through the south entrance at night is something we may pass on in the future.

Next week is probably the last week for sailing before we pull Waterloo out for the year. More night adventures to come.

We left early and were out of the harbor by 10ish and we made our way northeast towards the water intake off Belmont.  We had the newer main up for the first time and we’re pretty happy with it.  Unlike the older main, the racing main threads up the entire length of the mast and is loose on the bottom.  The older main has slides along the mast and threads the length of the boom.  I went below to grab a headsail.

The wind was fairly light and the older genoa was sitting in my dining room, so I grabbed what I thought was the bigger of the two racing sails.  It felt heavier, but we’d learn shortly that it was thicker, not larger.  Josh and I raised it while Chris kept us moving.  With the jib up, we got past the northern, red-striped inlet pretty quickly.

photo credit: nautical2k

After a few beers and we had changed course to head home, I suggested we try again with the sails.  “Let’s raise the big one.”

“I’ll help,” Chris said.  Josh said he’d steer.

After some careful folding and rolling and some less careful unfolding and unrolling, the big genoa was up. But it wasn’t up enough.  The thing was bigger than expected and took up more of the forestay than our other sails.  I dropped it slightly, pulled a few links out of our shackle chain that secured the tack, and yanked the halyard up the last 8 inches again.  Tight in the front, we turned to other matters.

“Let’s see how far into the wind we can point,” Chris said.

We sheeted everything in and Josh piloted us into the wind.  We had the windex registering in irons before we had to fall off.  “That’s pretty good,” Chris observed.

However, having a sail almost twice as big as your main billowing out along one side almost touching the deck doesn’t lend itself to great visibility for the helmsman.  This noted, we did a better job watching for others on the way in as we finished off the beer supply.  The gentlemanly sail was a success.

Justin called at 8 to say he had breakfast for us, but the tender service wasn’t yet running. I contemplated picking him up, but logic got the better of me and I abandoned that hope.

Fog clouds rolled into downtown and my first thought was that something terrible had happened. The fog was thick like smoke and more centralized that I’ve ever seen. It engulfed the Prudential Tower by the time Justin arrived.

The wind had picked up slightly and we decided to head out. After a near bounce off one of our neighbors, we found our way to the channel and lazily made our way out of the harbor.

“Are there any other sailboats out there?” Justin asked comparing our faith in the wind and weather to other’s.

“I think I see some,” I said, even though I did not.

The wind started to pick up as we distanced ourselves from the downtown wind shadow.  We raised the main and jib and made our way due east towards one of Chicago’s old water intake sheds.

As we approached, we fell off the wind slightly to avoid collision but still pass close enough to get a good look.  We discussed the pros and cons of commandeering this false island and eventually decided to pass.

Past our goal and obstacle, we tacked and headed home.  Back near Monroe we dropped the sails and motored in.  It was a one tack journey that had taken us farther offshore than we had ever been with Waterloo.

And then there’s the no wind situation.  I was at the helm with Justin and Sarah and we were making our way back to Monroe after an evening sail.  It was getting late and the wind was dying a little.  We’re going with the wind, but a little off it, and I decided we’d be better off after a jibe because we could head directly back to the south entrance.  So we jibed.

I look up at the windex and think, “huh, that’s weird, we need to tack.”  I say we need to tack and we tack and I look at the windex again and now it’s spinning.  So we’re in the middle of a cyclone.

Or, “The wind’s dead,” Justin says.  We start up the motor and head in.

Lisa took the helm for a little while and kept us on a mostly-straight heading.  Seadog, our arch-enemy tour boat, only buzzed us once.

It seemed like the day we would sail it into the harbor, but we’re not quite confident enough for that even with our perfect approach to the entrance.  We thought better of pushing our luck and jibed a few times to line us up for the south entrance.  We got the motor started, dropped the main, and headed in.

This was our first day sail together with Sarah and Justin and we had Champagne to celebrate our safe return.

We had lunch tied up in the harbor, the ladies took off, and Chris and I took Waterloo back out.  This time we went north and the water was much calmer and all the boats we had hoped to avoid were actually anchored (fooled us earlier), so we sailed around them for a while then headed home.  The Blue Angles did not respond to our fist pumps of annoyance.  It took us about 90 minutes and 3 radio calls to get the tender.  Luckily, the beer held out.