PAUL: Thursday, 7/10, I was all ready to head to Rhode Island to set up our new boat for racing on Saturday and Sunday. 10 minutes before my flight, I called Carrie just to say goodbye from the airport. She told me not to get on the plane, that our new boat was in Minnesota. Whoops! It was supposed to have been in RI a week ago. Well, I got my bags back off the plane just barely and took the bus back to long term parking and headed home.
By the time I got home, Carrie had gotten on the phone and verbally abused a few people. She got a guarantee that the boat would be in RI by 6:00 am Saturday morning. Friday she checked on the status of our boat and found it to be in Toledo, Ohio at 2:00 pm, only 12 hours from Newport, RI. So Bill and I decided to gamble on it being there and got on the plane Friday, but we knew everything would have to go perfect for us to sail and we would not get much rest in the process.
BILL: Non-Regatta Report. We got on a plane for Boston Friday evening and after finding a car and motel were asleep by 2:00 am. Three hours later we were back in the car and off to meet the nice truck driver guy who was delivering our newish boat. By noon we had the boat on the beach in Newport, RI and were ready to race.
The beach is not a wonderful place for boats, much better for sunbathing. If the beach has no fresh water, then even worse for boats. We found no evidence of fresh water or related fresh water gear, faucet, hoses, etc..
The boat seems like a keeper. It has all the good rigging ideas. The centerboard trunk is low in the boat so I don't smash my shins so much. Ratchet blocks are on the jib system which keeps me from getting sucked off the side of the boat. The spin halyard is a 1:2 instead of a 1:4 so Paul can pull it up. Lots of good stuff. Still not all is wonderful!
We launched off the beach (still bad for boats) and our centerboard gaskets fell into the ocean. I guess the previous owner used water soluble glue. Without gaskets our speed was going to be slower than all other boats sailing in this tune-up regatta, but were are old enough and stupid enough not to let that discourage us. After a couple of successful races we wanted to test the boat's durability so we ran into the back of another boat and nearly took our bow off. Fortunately, when we get to Israel we only have to replace the gaskets and torn bow.
The rest of the boat is great. Well, maybe we will replace some shock cord if we are feeling frisky. After a long day, we put the boat back on the beach (bad idea for boats) and headed to the store to buy lots of tools and food for Israel. Sunday we packed for Israel and headed back to Dallas to start training for the big regatta of the year.
Paul: We did get some good out of this weekend: We got to sail in some ocean waves and practice a lot of boat handling. We got to find out what we need to change on our boat. We got to see the sails we will use at the Worlds and we think they're ok, and we used the boat and found out that nothing broke. We also got to sail with only three hours of sleep. That will simulate the jet lag from our plane trip to Israel. Oh, we can't wait. We also figured out that sailing without a centerboard gasket is very slow.
We first figured out we were gasketless when we started to sail out to the race course. Water was shooting out of the centerboard trunk and filling our boat. We quickly opened the bailers and decided to return to the beach for an inspection. We turned the boat over and found the centerboard gasket 90% off. We took it the rest of the way off and decided to go racing anyway. We knew we would be slow, but we also knew it would still be good to work on boat handling. To stop the flow of water out of the centerboard trunk, we stuck my life jacket in the back of the trunk. This seemed to stop most of the water flow, but eventually the water would push the life jacket back out of the trunk. So we had to shove it back in after every race.
We found out how slow it was. We would be just a little slow until the boats started planing and then we would get run over, especially on the reaches. We continually had to keep reminding ourselves that it was just the gasket and we really were not that bad of sailors.
Finally at the end of the day with only three hours' sleep, ten races and getting rolled again on the reach, we flipped on a tack (tiller got stuck, Paul's fault). When we got on the centerboard to right the boat we found a couple of inches of the life jacket actually sticking out of the bottom of the centerboard trunk. We laughed and reminded ourselves that we need a gasket to go fast.
Thanks to Peter and Melinda Gerard for letting us use their van to haul the 470 around. Thanks to Prog and Claudia for flying us there. Thanks to Kitty Hawk for the newish boat. Thanks to Carrie for once again organizing everything and yelling at the appropriate people.
I wonder if we can ship Jim Andersen to Israel to install a new gasket (he put a new one on our practice boat at Rush Creek) and fix anything else that pops up, breaks or falls off.
FLASH UPDATE: Carrie comes through again! After a fierce verbal battle with the president of Vanguard, Carrie found out the truth about why our 470 was sitting in Minnesota when it was supposed to be in Rhode Island. The 470 truck driver decided to stop off in Minnesota for 4th of July celebrations. Unfortunately, he celebrated until Wednesday and forgot he was a truck driver. Vanguard is reimbursing our shipping cost!