A Seamless Sail?

So, we left Burnham as planned at around 7:00 pm on Sunday to attempt an overnight sail to Milwaukee. We headed out at around 65 degrees which was more north than we expected. The seas were also more than we expected and although we have been in much worse we started to wonder if either of us could sleep the way the boat was hobby horsing and pounding into the occasional four footer. We sailed out about 8 miles and tacked. Now our course was around 330 to 340 degrees! Great! This would take us past B'hai easily. But...still the pounding and being saftey conscious we really began to wonder what trouble a really sleepy crew might get into. Steering was non trivial as we were close hauled and had to be very busy on the helm to maintain our course.

After about 45 minutes on this tack and the city still pretty near we decide to go back to Burnham. We got back in with no problem around 11:45. So, our experiment with an all night sail will have to wait.

On  Monday morning we headed out again with a new plan. We'd only go to Waukegan and creep north from there. Winds were about the same and we raised the main and then began to unfurl the genny. About half way out it stuck. I looked up and realized that the leach seam had ripped out and the leach line was wrapped around the sail and the forestay many times. ARGGGGGGH! We managed to roll it back up and, of course, headed back in. We took the sail down and inspected it.  It really was pretty ripped up along the seam. Luckily we took it the same day to Sterling Sails and he did the repair in 1.5 hours.

While we were waiting for Sterling we stopped by Crowley's to look at that Pearson 365 Ketch. Sue had never seen it. So we gave it a look for fun. It is way over priced but this boat is a pretty neat cruising boat. We found out, though, that there is another one just on the market that is more reasonably priced and in better shape. So our 1 week cruise has turned into investigating the possibilities of buying this boat!

So if the sail hadn't ripped...and so it goes.  The only happy crewman was Gracie the Cat!
Looks like Scott will be racing on Sunday afterall.