1) Spent the first 60 minutes at the lake alternately working on installing a better righting system than the old ¼"-rope-tied-to-the-pylon version that was on the boat and sanding the excess Gorilla Glue off the port hull. Well, Ming did much of the sanding.
2) Filled the remaining holes uncovered by the sanding with a bit of epoxy.
3) Put boat in water and began to raise the sail.
4) After almost capsizing at the side of the dock for no apparent reason, I realize I neglected to screw in the drain plugs.
5) Drug the boat out of the water onto the floating PVC dock and drained probably 10 gallons of water from each hull. (This took several minutes.)
6) Sheepishly screwed in drain plugs. Wondered how many people saw.
7) Put boat back in water and raised the sail with two one-gallon jugs attached to the halyard shackle to prevent turtling.
8.) Headed out into the lake for some enjoyable sailing with Ming.
9) Attempted to locate source of strong weather helm. My guess was the previous owner incorrectly installing a new port rudder. I raised the port rudder to see if the weather helm went away when using starboard rudder only.
10) Noted continued weather helm on starboard rudder.
11) Noted sudden lack of any helm whatsoever when (apparently original 1975 plastic) starboard rudder breaks away.
12) Went into irons.
13) Agreed with Ming that the day's sailing was over. Attempted to return to dock.
14) Missed dock due to insufficient helm authority at last minute. Decided to go out and come back for another try.
15) Capsized mid-tack in middle of lake. Still not sure if this is my fault or due to lack of helm mid-tack.
16) Decided this was an excellent accidental opportunity to test new righting system.
16.5) Noted that the gallon jugs were doing their job as boat did not turtle.
17) Righted boat easily with new system.
18.) Spent 10 minutes almost constantly in irons. My theory is that when I would fall off so that the wind was approximately 90° to the boat and attempt to move forward, it would weathervane faster than the single rudder gained authority with boatspeed. I'm still not sure how we actually got moving again. LOL
19) Pulled boat from water, drained another gallon from each hull.
20 ) Called my friend and told him to hurry up and move to TX so that we can build 5 more fiberglass rudders. (Ref:
www.JaimeZX.com/Boating/Hobie -> part 3) He said "FIVE? WHY FIVE?" I said "Three for me, two for the 14 and one more for the 16, and you want to get a 16 so we should build you two also." LOL
21) Wished I had a beer. Heh.
That's about it. Overall:
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