Thread: GIS in Portsmouth, NH

Alright, alright...

Clint wrote:

we motor sail a lot, the mainsail up, and one oar out on the lee side one person rowing, then other steers and the sail provides a little lift. I will be engineering some sort of fold up/hinged tiller.

When I read this, I thought he was joking, because I pictured a 3hp on the transom, the tiller up, some slob on the rear seat smoking, the sail up luffing, with an oar dragging behind the boat and some dude also smoking a cigarette from the center thwart. Throw in some cheap beer, a mangy dog, and you get my drift.

WELL... Clint wasn't kidding, and I was wrong.

We were ghosting around looking for a breeze and Clint wanted to head out to the harbor a bit. We were on a starboard tack, and Clint suggests to do the "motor-sailing" trick. This is when it dawned on me he wasn't joking. So, one crew member (Clint) rides on the aft seat at the helm. The other (me) mans the center thwart with one oar over the leeward side (in this case the port side).

With the zephyr filling the sail, and some cranking on the oar, one can actually do some decent "motor-sailing" in the Goat. The oar adds propulsion, which increased the apparent wind, which fills the sail a bit more and creates some lift, in the opposite direction of the oar's velocity, which keeps the boat more or less tracking straight. The lounging crewmember at the helm can make the smaller corrections to keep course.

We scooted right along into fresher air. I was impressed at it's ease and efficacy. It's a good trick to have up one's sleeve when there's a little wind, but you've got a deadline to meet or you want to get out of the shadow of that large island.

So... thanks to Clint, I now can partake in some guiltless motor-sailing for the strict Sail & Oar afficiando!

Catching up on some reading...

Got room for a fourth GIS for the SRR? What with my retirement plans to go campering about beginning in January, I can easily plan to be in the right place at the right time with my GIS in tow.

What do you think?

You mean you aren't going to sail the Goat around The Horn?
-Al
Please come. We will descent like a cloud of Australian locusts!

If 4 boats at the SRR that would be just fantastic.

MIK

After many hours of work, we are almost finished with our Goat Island Skiff. We faired, primed, and painted the hull, and varnished the interior, spars, tiller, and foils. We ordered our hardware (mostly from Duckworks) and line (from Annapolis Performance Sailing), and we have only a few more bits of hardware to install before the boat is sailable. If everything goes according to plan, we'll be taking our GIS for her first sail this weekend.

Holy Balls!

It's beautiful! A really neat job, it'll put mine to shame!

We'll definitely have to match up for a sail at some point-- sister boats cruising around. Get ready to answer questions and turn heads, cause they come a'runnin'.

Where did you get the rudder hardware and the steel pin, and where did you get your sail? I'd love to compare sails.

Off to Maine again this weekend and next week, I hope you get as many pleasurable days of sailing in her as I have. Once you get things worked out rig wise she's a real keeper.

I can't find the receipt or any email confirmation, but I'm pretty sure we got the rudder gudgeons (Ronstan RF239 for rudder box and RF254 for transom) from Torresen Marine, and we got the stainless steel rod from a local hardware/marine store. The sail is from Duckworks. Hopefully we can find some time this fall for a GIS meetup...

Just great to have two boats in New Hampshire!

It looks really good!

I am really happy Christophe is around to help with sailing information too. He really has increased the sum total of knowledge about sailing the Goat this year.

MIK

What great news. It's like another birth in one's family!

Good luck. Christophe will be able to teach you all about the fastest way to bail a Goat

Originally Posted by callsign222

Off to Maine again this weekend and next week...

Good luck dodging Hurricane Earl. I'm supposed to be sailing in the LI Sound this weekend. We are hoping that Earl will have passed us by then, but that puts it all up in your face. We'll see whose crossed fingers work better. If nothing else, you may be getting more practice with the handkerchief reef this weekend.

Good luck, stay safe...

Thanks. I'm hoping it will blow by on Friday into Saturday, and we were planning on putting in Sunday. The boat and me are far enough inland that it won't be a problem on our landlocked hill...

The plan is that Earl will keep people out of Casco Bay Friday and Saturday, and since school is in session, people will scrub boating plans for the rest of the weekend. That means I'm hoping for a quieter Sunday and Labor Day with some emptier islands.

I know it all sounds self-serving, and I am hoping for nothing more than a glancing blow, and I know the islands could use the tourism money, but I'm definitely one to jump at an opportunity of low-traffic water, you know?

Have you weighed your hull? It would interesting to see because your hull is in the same state on completion that mine was when weighed. I think the 2 most recent hull weighs are 142 (mine) and 108 pounds (AUS).

See does look very good.

So our first weekend of sailing the Goat Island Skiff was a complete success! We had a bit of trouble with trailering it (we rigged up a temporary setup using a borrowed trailer), but sure enough she floated and we had several days of great sailing. The wind was fairly strong with a cold front passing through, so having too little wind was never an issue on the lake.


Just to prove it was built.

We didn't have a GPS to clock the speed but the Goat really flew through every gust of wind. I managed to capsize once in the middle of the lake in a bit of a squall but we were able to right the boat and bail it without much trouble. On the same expedition we made our first attempt at reefing the sail which was fairly easy but with all of the excess canvas at the bottom and no way to secure it I had trouble pointing upwind.



On the last day of our camping trip we christened her "White Island" with a bottle of champagne. Overall the Goat performed amazingly and was lots of fun to sail. I posted a few sailing pictures over on Flickr if anyone's interested.



Flickr: wclarkson's Photostream

Congrats! Looks like Squam!?

I invited Christophe to meet me at Squam Lake the 16 or 17th of October.

--Clint