Cooler Weather Sailing

After sailing on the Chesapeake in August this activity in Vermont looks pretty good! Friends from Middlebury enjoying a sail on a Force Five and a board.....

New Listings of Classic Yachts!

As we turn the corner into the Fall brokerage season I have listed for sale two extrordinary yachts:

"Windalier", the 58' Sparkman&Stephens Yawl, built by Abeking&Rasmussen in Lemwerder,Germany in 1962. I am charged with finding a new "caretaker" of this lovely, living, and breathing yacht!

"Jolie Brise", the 28' Bristol Channel Cutter, a masterpiece built by Sam L. Morse and inspired by the working pilot boats of the Eighteenth Century.

Two remarkable boats that I feel privleged to be associated with!

35 Freedom "Suzee"

Top-Knot yacht service was aboard Suzee today and made great strides in preparing the boat for a new owner. The hull sides waxed/buffed up remakably well suggesting that this boat will not require a hull paint job for years to come unless a new owner just "has to have" a colored hull. The white gelcoat is in great condition!
In spite of the heat the mechanic really applied himself and also did a great job with a dustless sander on the boats bottom. No sign of any blistering and in the morning she will have fresh ablative anti-fouling paint.
"Suzee" is approaching turn-key status for the Fall boating season on the Chesapeake!

2009 Oxford Race

The Summer Race to Oxford is a classic Chesapeake event and I sailed yesterday on a fully restored Tripp 41 owned by Jim Hayes of Annapolis. The boat was built on Naraganset Bay by Barret Holby in 1996. Since Jim's point of purchase about four years back he has morphed the boat from an IMS purpose built racer to add some cruising comforts. The outcome is a high performance cruising boat that can go racing if enough of Jims friends are available....
This was the first outing and it was special due to the cast of characters assembled from Jim's sailing buddies over the years. Charlie Scott (J-24 World Champion and overall SORC winner) came out of semi-retirement to skipper the boat. Anyone who has sailed with Charlie knows that he has a remarkable imbedded talent for helming a race boat. Former North Sail Designer John Danley trimmed the mainsail and ducked below occaisionally to check the plotter for skinny water. Richard Robinson from Wye Mills ably ran the pit.Rob Pennington (North Sails Chesapeake) trimmed headsails and kites and the builder Barret Holby ran the front of the boat. Three of these guys are veterans of the S&S 60 "Running Tide" so we are talking lots of experience! I would say that the cumulative racing experience of our crew would be in the range of 300 years! To balance our maturity we had Barrets lovely girlfriend Raquel, Charlie Stewart a recent grad of Colorado College and somewhere in the middle of the mix my spouse Susan Dierdorff Taylor and myself.

The race was a typical light air event in which we placed second in Class A-0. We were pleased to find that the boat offered a good turn of speed both up and downwind. We now have a punch list to tune the rig, install some new battens in the mainsail, repack a winch and so forth. On the otherhand the boat could comfortably sail to the Coast of Maine tomorrow in cruising mode with a Dacron Full-Batten Main on a Dutchman system.The boat now has a comfortable and handsome interior with fore and aft private cabins.

Picture of Tripp 41 @ Tred Avon Yacht Club last Fall

2009 Governors Cup/Windalier

I sailed a fairly uneventful light air Gov Cup Race on "Windalier" the 58'Abeking&Rasmussen built yawl. We had a nice reach down the Bay and celebrated Mike Keeen's birthday with a cake on deck with candles @ sunset......later in the evening the wind dropped out leaving us to nurse the 50,000 lbs of lovely mahagony and cedar into the St. Mary's River in light air. One wonders why this race can't be finished in the Potomac River. Who would complain about motoring up the St. Mary's River?? The deal with Windalier is that we don't like to have to "restart" her. Therefore lot's of effort is concentrated towards "keeping her moving" in the light stuff.

The delivery to the start of the race and from St. Mary's back to Rock Hall is a very different story than the race! Lot's of wind/waves and a learning experience for the crew as we continue to learn what the boat likes in various conditions. Thankfully, one of our crew with Log Canoe experience under his belt had seen this movie before. The clouds over Sandy Point were dark and rotating. The next hint was the appearance of "dust devils" on the beach. This gave us the cue to pull down/roll up anything resembling a sail! We ran downwind (prior to the start) under bare poles with short steep waves making up due to the fetch down the Magothy River....the boat is making over six knots (cog), so what to do when the Eastern Shore is looming large to leeward. Well, try a tad of stay sail? It's blowing the dogs of chains and I am concerned that a bit of stay sail will give us leeward helm but wow! The small bit of stay sail allows for about twenty degrees higher heading and some breathing room on the lee shore. I recall that we also applied some of the after centerboard (small appendage usually reserved for downwind control)to gain some more weather helm.
Later that evening I pull up some floorboards to find the bilges bone dry! I love double planked wooden boats!
Captain Thad Bench of Worton, Md. puts an eclectic and skilled crew together including sailors from Kent, Talbot, and Anne Arundel Counties. So when off watch we have the opportunity to compare what's going on in these distinctly different cultures!
Once at anchor in the St. Mary's River the crew enjoyed a soothing swim in eighty degree water, decorated ship, and went ashore for the festivities. Thanks to Thad for a memorable weekend on Windalier!