Toronto Training Run
I know, I know. This is a very late report on the training run to Toronto. I got back to Kingston on Monday night and it’s been tough getting back into the swing of things at work and I’ve been getting ready for a couple of events that are coming up.
We (the boat and I) left Kingston on Thursday night and headed out in almost glass flat conditions. My motor is a touch temperamental on a good day, but she performed like a champ for the few hours until the night breeze started to fill in around 2000-2100 that night. It was a beautiful sail out of the harbour; sunsets are just so amazing this time of year.
One of the goals for this training run was to try out as many sail combinations as possible and I definitely did well on this goal. As the wind direction and speed changed, I did every sail change as if I was racing. I also had about 100L of water in moveable tanks, so this was a good chance to see how weight affects the boat at various points of sail and in different wind conditions.
As the sun went down I tried to get into a sleep pattern that I could live with for a while, and I am happy to say that I stuck with it for the duration of the trip. (Except the end, more on that latter.) I set my watch to repeat every 20 minutes and whenever it went off, I checked the bearing, sail trim and traffic and then tried to doze again. I slept in the cockpit for most of the sail, which sounds uncomfortable, but really isn’t that bad if you are dressed for it.
Sailing was light but good on Friday, with a broad breeze and filling as the day went on. I went fairly far south on this leg, and was outside of communications for almost all of Friday. It was the first time I got that pang of “damn, I am really far out here and if I were to fall off the boat, no one would know for days…” I was too busy to dwell on it really, but that knowledge in the back of my head motivated me to stay safe and move slowly and deliberately.
I got to Toronto around 0300 on Saturday morning, and when I went to take my main down I found that the bolt rope had frayed enough that I couldn’t get the main down. After fighting with it for an hour, I gave up and headed into the harbour with it up. To make matters worse, I bumped into the mud just outside of the RCYC harbour, and had to spend another half hour trying to get out!
After a quick sleep, Andrew Morgan came over to help get the main sorted out and after a couple of hours of pulling, cutting, “dremmilling” we got the main down. I spent the rest of the day visiting with old friends from RCYC, picked up some more groceries on the main land, and headed to bed around 2130. (My internal clock was so screwed up, I could have stayed up and partied with folks, but I thought better of it.)
After breakfast on Sunday morning, through off the lines and headed back to Kingston in a really nice 10-16 knot breeze. It was perfect conditions for the boat, with flat water and a building breeze. We were traveling at almost 10 knots, and passing boats almost three times my size. “Big grin sailing.”
Around 0000 my autopilot was having trouble keep a compass course and the GPS was giving me low power warnings. Turns out that both batteries were almost empty. By 0200 the GPS would not even start up, and I was stuck steering all the time. I was exhausted by the time the sun came up, but as Point Petre arose on the horizon my bearing in was right on. We bore off with a full main and a kite up and blasted North toward the Duck Islands.
I finally got into Kingston around 1730 and got the deck cleaned up before hitting the dock. I was SO looking forward to seeing Alison, having a hot shower and getting into a nice soft bed.
I was back to work on Tuesday morning, and this week has been somewhat of a blur as I have had to keep the momentum going despite some serious sleep deprivation. Ces’t la vie, this is the life of a competitive solo sailor.
Hope everyone has a great weekend. I’m going sailing!