August 12, 2011-Sailing out of Richard's Bay

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Sailor Girl

The mast has been up a month, the rig is tuned, the mainsail repaired, the hydraulics all fixed; we’re ready to go sailing.

So today we took Wings out for a little test sail. The weather was perfect: blue African skies, blue Indian Ocean, big east coast waves, and 20 fresh knots of true cool wind with plenty of punch.

Wings loved it, we loved it.

We set the full mainsail, a bit flat, and a #4 jib and headed out into the fresh NE wind close hauled and doing 6.8 knots. We got a few splashes of salt water in our faces to keep it real, and we took turns steering. I went forward on port tack and checked the rig; the mast was perfectly straight and the shrouds felt good. Oh, I could take a couple of turns on the lowers and the D-2’s but nothing critical. Tacked over and checked again in starboard. Same result. Job done we settled in and just let everything work for a few hours. We smoked on upwind in the big waves and enjoyed life.

At 2:00PM we cracked off and the speeds climbed. We jibed over and headed back on a beam reach and started to surf: 8’s and 9’s; Judy saw 10+ a couple of times. Good sailing.

We surfed into the Richard’s Bay channel and Judy went forward to drop the jib. Behind Naval Island we took down and folded the main.

We were back in the slip at 3:30 PM.

Life is good when you can go sailing in the ocean in conditions like this.

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Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Richard’s Bay, South Africa