Sunday, April 25, 2010

Bristol to Newport April 24, 2010

The day came to move Fujin from Bristol to Newport RI.  It was like sending a child away from home in a way.  The shed at Bristol Marine is the place where this ship was built (and the yard where it was re-built).  Fujin will remain in Newport until early May when we'll bring her to Boston Harbor.

We hope to return her to Bristol again someday for cruising or perhaps winter storage.

There were still a few things to wrap up before cast-off from Bristol so we didn't get moving until almost 2PM. Newport is about a 12 mile trip.

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The route between Bristol and Newport

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Pre-launch preparations in Bristol

Never dull
We started out in very light wind with both sails up full. Fujin got moving about 4-5 kts even so.

About as soon as we got out of inner Bristol Harbor, we got into some stiff breeze and we had our hands full. It was definitely time to reef the sails.

It all goes wrong...
First we reefed the genoa. As I was furling it in, the knot attaching the port sheet to the sail let loose. That's the first time a bowline I tied ever came apart. So we completely furled the genoa leaving us with only an extremely over-powered main.

On my way to the mast to reef the main, I looked to see if the reefing line was attached well to the main sail. Uh... the reefing line... yes uh... whooops.... we never attached the reefing line!

The task...
The reefing line runs inside the full length of the boom, through a pulley at the rear of the boom, and up to a ring in the main sail. So all we had to do was feed a rope through 16 feet of boom and around a pulley on a boat that's heaving all over the place in heavy wind.

We snaked it through the boom using a metal tape measure and electrical tape (holy McGiver, Batman!) A few minutes later we had a more or less (mostly less) proper reefing line and we dropped the main to the reef point and things got much more under control.

Two ships passing
We were sailing along just fine with only our reefed main. We were very happy with how well the boat performed in this configuration. The wind was directly out of the south (the exact direction we were going) so we wanted to point as high as possible and we were able to do so quite well.

About then, we see this Hunter 41 heading toward us. The skipper is waving his hands and yelling something at us. Oh SNAP! now what? He took a turn and came up along side of us. It was Rob from Bristol Marine just saying hello! Of course he had to also point out how crappy our reefed main looked.

More Steam
Between leaving late and our little catastrophe, we were running a little late. Our neighbors from Arlington drove down to move our car from Bristol to Newport and they were already in Newport waiting for us. We were still about 4 or 5 miles away. It was time to fire up the diesel so we could head directly into the wind and get there. It was too bad because had that strong wind been 30 degrees more west, we could have really flown.

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Looks like we're almost to Newport Bridge. In fact it's still over a mile away in this picture


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Great shot of Linda steering under Newport Bridge.

Where is that ball?
Now all we have to do is find the mooring ball. After maneuvering slowly around the mooring field near NY Yacht club, we spotted it and tied up. We Made IT! Over on the shore we could see Linda's car parked next to our neighbors' Prius.

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Our home for the next couple weeks in Newport