Lessons From Our Recent Sailing Trip

--Blogpost written by Bob

We have learned a couple lessons and made some discoveries that should help in our future cruising:

(1) To save my back, we need an electric windlass to lift the 44-lb anchor and it's chain.

We have purchased a Maxwell RC8-8 and it will be installed during the week of July 18.

(2) We need a better way to predict the wind.

I downloaded an app on my iPad, PredictWind.  We'll see how well it works in the next couple months.

This is a screen shot of our new PredictWind app.  The color of the water represents
the wind speed according to the scale at the bottom of the map.  This screen
shot happens to show about 5 knots of wind all around our area.

(3) We need to have more reliable weather forecasts.

We have used our weather underground app mostly but we now believe we need to consult three different weather forecasts and arrive at a consensus forecast.

(4) We have to redesign our fore peak tent so that we can leave our hatches open during rain storms.

We are now redesigning our fore peak tent and this will be the subject of a future blogpost.

(5) We discovered a new wine we really like, Conde Villar vinho verde rose.

We found out where (a wine shop in Middletown, Delaware) we can buy a case for our trip.  We will take 2 cases of wine with us, the other case being Spier Chardonnay.  Both wines are under $10 per bottle!

This rose from Portugal has a little bit of effervescence and fruitiness which
makes it very tasty.  At less than $10 per bottle, it's a real deal!

(6) We need to upgrade our everyday boat dishes.

We purchased a 4-place setting of Corelle square (white) dishes and added some lunch and dinner plates to the 4-place set.  We retired our old plastic boat dishes because they were a little too much like camping.

Our upgraded boat dishes made by Corelle make our
boat life a little less like camping.

(7) In 2014 we bought a collapsible hose to take with us because it took up less space than a normal garden hose but it is complete junk and it leaks already.

We decided to throw it away and use a normal garden hose for fresh water.

We purchased this collapsible hose after our month-long sailing trip in 2014.
In my opinion this type of collapsible hose has no place on a sailboat.

We are now back at our boatyard getting more work done.  Stay tuned for our next blogposts coving our windlass installation and other things...

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