Another Day Sail

Yesterday Jeff, Klaus and I took Pachuca out for a sail.

Jeff was the right man sent by the gods at the right time to help me install the Monitor self steering. He has a beautiful Passport 40 five slips up. He and his wife Molly have sailed Mexico, Central America, French Polynesia, New Zealand, and the East side of Australia where they lived for several years and built a house.

Arnold and I met Klaus when we paid a nostalgic visit to the condominium in Punaluu, I think, on the NE side of Oahu where Arnold had lived in the early 1970's. We struck up a conversation with Klaus, a resident on the ground floor. He became very interested in our cruise, both past and future. A few weeks later he visited me here on Pachuca and I showed him the boat and we talked about sailing. Not long after that I met him at the Aloha Tower for a chat. Then about two weeks ago I visited his condo for lunch and afternoon of swapping yarns over cold beers. Klaus had expressed an interest in going for a sail and today was the day.

Jeff and I handled the boat. We backed dropped the lines and backed the boat between the rear mooring float and Paul's Kayak almost perfectly, if I say so myself. We motored out and when we had plenty of sea room Jeff executed two 2-minute 360 degree turns to starboard while I worked the ST60 wind instrument . This was a response to Raymarine's insistence that the solution to my ST60 problems was to calibrate the unit. The latest instruction was to set the ST60 to “factory default” just before the turns (which is not in the instruction manual and nobody had mentioned before), execute two turns in either direction and whatever rate I wanted (contrary to other instructions that the turns should be slow), and don't even look for a flashing display which would indicate a successful calibration (contrary to what the manual states). After the calibration turns we soon concluded that the calibration had been a failure. (Literally the Raymarine Runaround.)

We then spent about three hours sailing in a good breeze that must have averaged about 15 knots. It was a splendid afternoon of clear blue skies and panoramic views of Honolulu, Waikiki, and Diamond Head. We put the Monitor through its paces at various points of sail and Jeff made some good observations and suggestions about how the boat is set up and managed. He said that he can tell that Pachuca is faster and more agile than his boat which weighs 4.5 tons more.

On the way back we went to manual steering and Klaus took the helm.

We got Pachuca back into her slip with no dramas, though I would not have called it a perfect entry. Having said that, our handling of Pachuca was much smoother than in our first time out the previous week.

Attached are photos of Klaus at the helm and Jeff.