Well, the best anecdotes usually come out of mistakes and screw up.
Those of you who have followed my website and posts know I'm not shy
about reporting mine so I hope not to get flamed for reporting that I
have nothing to report except everything going incredibly smoothly for
the first cruise of a boat in some fairly brisk conditions. Even the
head cooperated. My crew, three women who had never cruised before,
expressed surprise that such an apparent kludge of valves and pumps
could work so well.

We did snag two lobster pots which made me a bit less sanguine about
that aspect of the boat. In both cases, however, it appeared to be
two pots that had tangled their lines so that they were stretched at
an unnatural direction.

My system for getting free worked so well that the snags were not much
more of an event than needing to reef.
I have a hookknife on board but chose not to used it and be left
wondering what might still be attached out of sight below. I'll use
it if I snag near a lee shore and need to restore control quickly but
the following method works very smoothly and quickly.

I have a large bronze snap hook tied to a line a few feet longer than
the boat. I fasten this to the end of a long extending boathook with
duct tape. If the tape is applied to the rope and hook properly, the
pole will guide the pot warp right into the hook. Once the line is
hooked, which was very quick and easy in both cases, the pole is
yanked free. Rolling up the jib and letting the main pull the warp
tight brings it up where it can be seen or felt with the pole.

Once the warp is clipped, the main is lowered and the line taken
through a bow chock and back to a halyard winch on the mast. This
pulls a bight of the warp forward and, in both cases, the buoy came
with it. It was then just a matter of winching the buoy aboard,
unclipping it, and getting underway again.

--

Roger Long



"Gary" wrote

Any interesting anecdotes come out of this cruise?

Gary