Justin's Catalina 25: First day of great sailing! @ Sail Blogs

[NewsReader]

Today I intended on primarily sailing, not working on the boat. Dave joined me as crew and helped me out. Dave noticed that we set up my jib on the furler incorrectly and we removed it and put back on correctly. We initially had the incorrect end of the halyard attached to the head of the sail. Now the sail is a few inches higher off the deck giving a better view from the cockpit. Thanks Dave for figuring that out and the help! We had a great day on the water, set sail around noon and came back around 5pm. For a good amount of time we were sailing 5-6 knots, our top speed was around 6.25 knots! That's about hull speed and can't get much faster than that. We sailed north towards the Thomas Point light house and sailed about 30 minutes past it. We had some steady winds the entire way north, but then it died down for about 20-30 minutes when we decided to head back to port. We started up the Honda and motored for during that time. The wind soon picked up again and we were back to some more adventurous sailing. There were some strong gusts and sometimes we furled the head sail to a smaller size. Even with my genoa 135% furled to around 100-110% we were easily hitting 5 knots. We were heeling the boat with the port rail probably about 6-12" from the water. Hard to tell exactly, but if you were on that side of the boat, you would easily be able to touch the water and would get wet with the waves. I have to get used to the way my boat handles and what her limits are. She feels pretty stable, but I have to get used to the heeling. It's a little daunting at first, but as you get used to it, it sure is a lot of fun. The weather was beautiful, around 80F, and partly sunny. They forecasted a 30% chance of isolated thunder storms which we did not encounter. We did have a little rain even though we would look up and see blue sky, sun, and only a few clouds. It made for a great day of sailing on the bay. Direct Link

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[tenuki]

what keel configuration do you have?