June 2017 – Adventures on the Club

It always takes me awhile to settle in at the beginning of the sailing season. I suppose it’s only natural with a six month offseason, but I still don’t like it. We’re always rusty, forgetting to do the little things, which contributes to a heightened sense of nervousness on my part. Will there be an issue with the engine? Does that powerboat see us? That kind of thing. Add in the fact that now we’re in a slip, and it hasn’t been the most stress-free start to the season.

After a while I always relax. We get into a groove with the boat, I only notice the powerboats that are aiming right at us, and I don’t even think twice about Thumper. This past weekend I took a giant step towards getting into my groove when we took Pegu Club on our first trip to Stonington for the season. It was finally going to be sunny and warm for Saturday AND Sunday, and the weatherman called for 10-15 knot winds. Well, at least they got the sun and temperature right. The wind? Not so much.
Continue reading “Settling in for the season.” →

One of the items we’ve wanted to purchase for Pegu Club is a whisker pole. Sailing down wind the jib tends to collapse on itself when it’s caught in the main sail’s shadow, so a whisker pole is used to keep the headsail out to weather which improves speed and efficiency. With the prevailing winds around here we don’t tend to do a lot of downwind sailing, but we know that will change when we head out permanently. In the meantime, it will be nice to have for those occasions that call for it.

Our initial plan was to buy one at the Defender Warehouse sale, but they run around $850 on sale and with all of the money we had spent getting the house ready we decided to wait a bit. Defender has categories of items that go on sale throughout the season with prices as good as the Warehouse sale, so we knew with a little patience we’d get one before the summer was out.

Looking at their website last week, I saw that they were having their Sail on Sale sale so it was time to pull the trigger. After a lot of research to make sure we were buying the right one, along with the proper mounting accessories. the plan was to pick it up on Saturday morning. We were talking about it on Friday after work as we packed our things to drive down to Shenny, when suddenly I thought of the consignment shop in Newport that we had been to a few weeks ago. Maybe they would have one? Jeff didn’t think so – he had only seen larger poles while we were there – but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to call them.

Continue reading “Score!” →