The Periwinkle and Stargazer Blog

I have to preface this video with the point that I've never flown a spinnaker before, at least not with any serious idea of sailing around. I've sort of put it up once in the past but didn't get it quite right and thought I would try again another day. Well.. that day came on this day as I was heading up the east coast of Gabriola Island. I had both a following wind and following sea and it was some pretty good conditions to try it out. Main and jib alone weren't really getting me along as fast I would have liked.

So.. this short video is the compilation of a few clips together of me trying to get all three sails going at once to get as much speed as possible. In the end I think I did quite well for singlehanding it and getting some video in. I did make good progress until I rounded the northern end a bit to turn into one of the bays and anchor.

It was good experience.

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This entry was posted on February 25, 2012 at 9:48 PM and has received 47 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Here's that next clip I was talking about in my last post on the second long sail I got in last year. It's a morning clip when I woke up and poked my head out the hatch. Really nice morning, I can't wait to get out sailing again...

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This entry was posted on February 17, 2012 at 8:29 PM and has received 61 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I've got all kinds of videos and pictures and I was thinking about how I was going to put them together into something viewable and have neither the time at the moment or creativity to do it.. there wasn't enough video in succession to make any sense! bummer. I'll have to do better next year. Trip 1's videos aren't bad, I'll see what I can do there but maybe I'll just take this approach of putting up small clips that show a part of the trip as I narrate it and show the surroundings.

Anyways, this clip is from the second sailing trip that I took over to the gulf islands. I had sailed all the way across with just some minor motoring at the end where the wind somewhat died off. It was a beautiful day and a great sail across with lots of wind. I think there was so much so that I wasn't able to concentrate on too much other than sailing, so no video of the trip across, just the first destination.

This is where I made it to: http://g.co/maps/a7rf4, just off of Valdes Island on the North end, beautiful area in the right weather. I didn't have any issues that night and have another clip in the morning that I'll have to post up shortly.

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This entry was posted on February 15, 2012 at 9:10 PM and has received 58 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I managed a quick trip not too long ago and took some video to prove it! About half way through it switches from my Canon DSLR to the Atrix (my phone), it's hard to see the difference but there is definitely some interesting colour correction going on with it. Most noticeable at the end where the entire background essentially turns blue... weird. Either way, check it out!

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It was a really nice day with just the right amount of wind. Got the sails all aired out, the engine all warmed up (did a beginning of the season oil change last month) and it looks to me like I'm ready to go on a trip! Anyways, enjoy the view, it sure was nice while it lasted that day.

This entry was posted on June 24, 2011 at 11:22 PM and has received 192 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I was going to post this in the last post but I wrote more than expected about power consumption and battery thoughts that I figured I would make this a story for itself.

Two seasons ago I was out on a 5 day trip to the Gulf Islands. It turns out that the day that I was crossing the straits to get there from Vancouver, it was one of the windiest days around for a while. The straits had a lot of fetch so it was pretty rolly going across, although nice and quick thanks to being able sail pretty much the whole way. I remember putting the motor on a bit just to even things out. Gets tiring going 4 to 5 hours on short choppy water. bleh..

Anyways, once across I turned in the first place I could off of Gabriola Passage to settle in for the evening. Turns out that the little island there is "owned" by the vancouver yacht club and despite the storm that was coming in they just weren't interested in lending not only a helping hand but a safe place to tie up to for the night. Such as it was I tossed out the hook across from them on the east side of Valdes there. Unfortunately part way through the night I had woken up with the worry that the boat was drifting a bit. It was. Frustrated, I pulled up the anchor and motored around the corner after checking the tides and pulled into Degnen Bay (which is a lot more protected from the wind) and tied up to a mooring ball for the next few hours to get some sleep. Nobody came to get mad but I got going as early as possible so as to not piss anybody off for tying up to their mooring ball.

With that out of the way the wind picked up again on the way south to Thetis island, which I think was the next stop for the night.. but I can't recall exactly, might have stopped somewhere before that. Just as I was coming around on a tack about half way there the luff caught on the spreaders (I didn't and now have no need for spreader protectors) and rrriiipppp.. the sail just ripped right up the seam and a bit more:

Yikes.. It still worked but obviously wasn't going to do too much good. Rolled that up and sailed by main alone for a bit. The wind was just crazy coming around the north end of Thetis to then pull in to the docks there. Unbelievably I couldn't find one place that had some duct tape to sell and for some reason I didn't have any on the boat. Of course I'm not nearly good enough of a sailor to have a kit to sew it back up together which meant that it was a ferry ride over to Vancouver Island to get to a real store. That actually worked out well anyways, it was a good trip and I'm now a lot more familiar with the area. Here's a quick video that gives a bit of an idea of the weather (while beautiful it was very windy..):

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Coming back with duct tape, it was get to work time:

Duct tape on a sail.. I'm sure there are many that are cringing at this fix but I didn't have a choice as there were still about 3 days left of the trip and I definitely didn't want to be sailing without a jib. No spare either as this sail is on a roller furling. The biggest issue here was that it was generally very windy but just as the sun was going down a bit, the wind died down for about.. maybe an hour. There was no way that the fix would have happened had it not died down but time was of the essence. As luck would have it the fix was made and sail put back on with just barely time before the wind picked back up and in turn it was a very windy, noisy night:

The rest of the trip was uneventful for problems like that and only a couple of pieces of tape came off on the trip and that happened within the first few hours of using the sail. While not perfect it definitely worked. That sail was not only ripped right up the seam but also along the seams running perpendicular and other random worn out areas. Once back I got the sail off and took it along with me a few weeks later or so to a sail shop where I had them completely remove the damaged area and reinforce it all with new UV resistant material. The main catalyst to this, besides the sail being old, is that I hadn't taken the sail off during the off season. So that part of the jib was just sitting in the sun all year, no wonder it failed when put under stress.

To quickly go back to the statement about not needing spreader protectors, since it ripped on the end there I just had that whole area cut right off and wrapped UV protected fabric around it so that I wouldn't see that issue again. Works perfectly and has held up well all last season and I expect the same this season.

This entry was posted on March 12, 2011 at 6:05 PM and has received 159 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Here's just a short video that I got of us walking along one part of Blackberry Point on our trip there. Definitely a nice place to go and just wander, lots of trails due to the fact that it used to be a heavily logged area and there are logging roads and trails all over the place there. The blackberries were quite good too. Aptly named area. Here's Terry narrating our walk a bit there:

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This entry was posted on January 23, 2011 at 3:29 PM and has received 149 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.