Evanston: over the bow
Evanston: over the bow
We drove to GANNET late yesterday morning--having set the cable box to record the Women’s World Cup Final in our absence--with the idea that if there was no wind, I’d would work on the boat while Carol supervised. However when we arrived at noon, there was wind. Perhaps six or seven knots from the southeast. So I put the Torqeedo on the bracket and we rushed out to Lake Michigan. Well, whirred out at 2.5 knots anyway.
The channel is narrow and no one was moving much faster than we were until the last marker off the breakwater entrance, where many power-boaters immediately give their engines full throttle.
To my credit I don’t recall that I ever liked power-boaters.
Once clear of the washing machine of colliding and rebounding wakes, I raised the main and set the second of GANNET’s number 1 genoas, a North Sails 155%. In a few seconds the little sloop was doing 6 knots in about that much wind, and continued to do so for most of the afternoon. As the wind built to 9 and even 10 knots, her speed often touched 7, with a maximum reading of 7.2.
Reaching out, we were almost close-hauled when we turned around and headed back in. In fact the wind had veered to the south and we should have been close-hauled. With haze obscuring the shore until we got close, we came in exactly where I didn’t want to be, a mile north and downwind of the marina entrance.
One to two foot waves had risen on the lake, with scattered white-caps. A few even splashed over the bow and onto GANNET’s foredeck. I thought the day would never come.
Wanting to get the genoa down away from other boats, I lowered it and dropped it through the forward hatch for folding later at the dock. The wind, which might even have reached 12 knots a few miles out, was not strong enough for GANNET to sail well though the chop near shore under mainsail alone; so I lowered the Torqeedo into the water and tried to power.
It was not news that GANNET does not like to power directly into chop. Neither do I. But it was instructive to see how dramatically the reading of remaining range in her battery went down when I increased the throttle enough to move us forward at 2 knots.
We left our slip with the battery 96% charged. We tied up again with it at 36%, having powered less than 3 miles. It is a half mile from our slip to the breakwater entrance.
The obvious solution is don’t come in downwind of your destination, and in the future I will strive hard not to.
I probably doubled the time and distance I’ve sailed GANNET, and may now even have surpassed ten hours and thirty miles.
It was a nice sail.
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No good team wants a game to go to penalty shoot-out.
Regular soccer games can and often do end in ties. But at the knock-out stages of certain tournaments a winner must be decided on the day, and if the game ends in a draw after ninety minutes of regulation play and thirty minutes of overtime, it goes to shoot-out, often preceded by ‘dreaded’ because a shoot-out is a crap shoot, a throw of the dice, a game of chance.
Yesterday three matches were decided by shoot-outs, and the favored team lost all three.
In the Copa America Brazil was eliminated by Paraguay in a penalty shoot-out as was Argentina by Uruguay.
And of course the United States women lost a shoot-out and the World Cup to Japan.
I did not see the Copa America matches; but we did watch the recorded women’s championship when we returned home from our sail.
The United States was decidedly the better side. They dominated play, both offensively and defensively. They did everything except what they needed to do to win.
Many, many opportunities to put the game away were missed. Some a normal part of play--a shot hitting the cross bar; a header not quite on target. But a significant number were wasted by players taking shots from impossible side angles rather than centering the ball to a team mate with a more likely opportunity.
In the end, they let Japan back in the game twice.
While the United States did not do enough, Japan did.
The better team did not win the Women’s World Cup; the more deserving team did.
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The lead photograph shows GANNET’s entire instrument system. The Velocitek ProStart on the mast displays our Course Over the Ground of 55º above our Speed Over the Ground of 6.5 knots. Both determined by its own internal GPS.
In the lower part of the picture, just to the right of the mainsheet is the Uniden depthsounder. The unit that came with the boat was dead; but with a transducer already permanently mounted through the hull, I bought a replacement rather than change.
I believe it too is reading 55, this time feet.
The maximum reading we saw yesterday more than ten miles offshore was only a hundred feet more.
Monday, July 18, 2011