Friday, June 18, 2010

June 17 PM


Jen here,

Barry arrived just after noon today and Erin and I excitedly began to set up our new boat. The process of setting a boat up the first time is time consuming, and so we set one goal for the day: get the mast up. This may sound simple, especially to a laser sailor, but for us it’s a little more involved. First we had to wash and polish the hull. Then strip off the old gasket and replace it with a new one. Finally we were ready to actually flip the boat right side up. Then it was tinker with this, replace that, modify this etc etc. Until finally at about 7:00pm we were so hungry that we were beginning to do things incorrectly.

We had dinner on site with our friends Hunter and Gordon, Canadian 49er sailors, and set back to work stepping the mast. After a few more hours of tinkering and modifications, we stepped the mast just as the light was fading away. Fortunately we’re pretty far north so dusk fell on us at 10:30pm! Tomorrow will be finishing set up, tuning the rig and a quick sail to make sure that everything is running correctly in the boat. Whew!

Jen

June 18 pm

So it officially takes two full days to set up a 470 from scratch! We were hoping to get on the water this afternoon but it did not end up happening. The boat is fully set up though! We have gone over everything and re-done almost all of the major lines. The most amazing part about setting up the boat was tuning it. Barry said "I think we usually set up the base on the 7 pin" so we pinned to 7 and tensioned to 27. Mast rake was 101 cm, and spreaders were at 60 mm. Amazing! We got all our settings tuned in, even the 5th setting. This setting is for like, 35+ knots, or as we like to describe it, when the water catches fire and the boat flies through the air. I was having a mental block and asked Jen "what do you call the end of the world?" she replied the apocalypse - or 2012. So we have now called setting #5 2012, which we think is pretty hilarious.

We are registered and have even found someone to tow us the 6-8 miles offshore to the racecourse! This is excellent as it means we won't have to launch at 5 am to get to the course!

We cooked probably the largest and most balanced meal ever cooked in a hostel tonight. Salad, mashed potatoes and fish for Jen and chicken for me. I eat meat, but no seafood. Jen is a veggie, except for seafood. So we made a little tin-foil divider in our Tupperware from ikea to separate our proteins. Jen then said something extremely funny and sarcastic at dinner and I proceeded to laugh so hard tea came out my nose. I don't think I've had food-liquids come out my nose since I was about 8.

So we are having fun, maybe a bit over-tired? Tomorrow I think I will try and teach Jen to drive stick. We'll see how that goes. Erin


Kiel Week

1 comment:

  1. We had our first Ikea experience in Germany back in the day, way before Ikea hit Canada. Sounds like things are going well so far, good luck tomorrow.

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