First Sail of the Year

We had our first sail of 2018 last week.

I did some maintenance to the main and headsail and still had to slide the battens in before hoisting the main halyard.

Winds were pretty light from the north. We were doing four knots in the water upwind and peaked just under five heading down.

A pod of three or four Orca whales showed up heading north past Bainbridge island. A stupid motorboat decided to cruise right on top of them and scared them below. They resurfaced further north. There was no keeping up with them. We also paid a quick visit to the sea lion that lives on the channel marker near the marina.

While returning to the marina I noticed the motor wasn’t spitting out the stream of water from the cooling system. I decided to keep the RPMs low and dock before checking it out. Turned out to be some strange fluke but I’ll have to keep my eye on it.

Launches and landings have become pretty uneventful now that I’ve unlocked the outboard to allow tiller steering.