Sailing can be very taxing and requires considerable strength and balance. Ever tried pulling in a fouled sail while standing on the bow in 8 ft. seas? A few minutes of getting thrashed can really wear a sailor out. This simple routine will build strength and improve your balance. It’s easy and utilizes a common item found on any boat – your anchor. Try to use the heaviest possible, and keep your eyes covered.

I recommend 4 sets of 20 repetitions.
Remember the saying: no pain, no gain.

There’s a huge “Sail Boston 2009″ event going on right now – July 8th – 13th. Having my finger on the pulse of sailing around the globe, I thought it was a good time to talk about it since it’s almost over. So, if you’re somewhere near Boston, go! Go now!

Above is an informative pic from the Sail Boston 2009 website. Interesting how similar the ships seem, but after a close look, the rigs are quite different. Since my brain cells are often short-lived, the best I’ll be able to remember is “that there is a wood masted shipentine.”

Mike, a recent visitor to my site contacted me via email and we began chatting about boats (really!), repairs, etc. He commented how he has a big book of articles and notes for various repair jobs, but thought it would be nice if there was an online resource. That sparked the old brain and I read up on some open source wiki software – same stuff used by wikipedia.com

About 20 hours and 4 domain names later I got www.SailStudy.com up and running. Boy, just about every domain with the word “sail” in it is taken. Hopefully this one is short, easy and memorable. I admit the wiki thing is a bit foreign to me, but I’m absorbing as much as possible. This is meant to be a resource for everything sailing. If ANYBODY has wiki experience and would like to give it a try, please go for it! It’s all open for editing, you just need to be a registered user to modify the site. Have at it!

More to come as I get this figured out.

I was born a poor Ohio flat-lander. Just outside of Toledo in the quiet (read BORING) town of Swanton. This area is so flat – not a hill or slope for 50 miles - that I was denied any kind of winter sledding as a child, destroying my chances of becoming a world-class luger. I used to cry when snow went down my neck and up my sleeves anyhow, so it really wasn’t meant to be. This probably explains my sheer terror when it comes to heights. I’m not talking skyscrapers either – I used to have to go up on the roof of our one story house in Palm Harbor and I would cling to the chimney like a baby possum. It just freaks me out.

It’s lonely at the top.

Now, if I’m tethered securely, it’s a different story – say 2 stories. That’s about all I can do. Window washer will never, ever be on my resume. A couple weeks ago our windicator thingy got bent from the finches or blackbirds that are here for the winter. It needed to be straightened and thank freakin’ Neptune CannonBall volunteered. He has some sort of mental problem that causes him to ENJOY hanging from a string 40 feet in the air.

Mariola came with a nice bosun’s chair and CannonBall wanted to give it a try. JackKnife and I prepared to haul him up the mast. Common sense told me dangling him from the halyard alone was risky, so we also clipped the raggedy looking jib halyard to the chair. Since the jib halyard is on the front side of the mast it had to be unclipped, passed over the spreaders and reclipped. This was the breath-holding tense part, but it worked smoothly. We managed to haul CannonBall up, he straightened the windex and we lowered him back down without incident. Since then I’ve read a few things online that would seem to help should there be a next time.

Thing that helps you go up.

The line ascender. This little clip thing looks like a better solution than hauling the main halyard and jib halyard up at the same time. With the line ascender you can leave the jib halyard cleated off and just slide it up the line as you go. I’m going to get one of these soon, to have on hand for the next climb of terror.  I’ve got water coming in around the mast whenever there’s a heavy rain. This bugs me as I like a dry bilge to keep the mustiness in the cabin down to a minimum. When CannonBall was at the top he said there was a big gap that had potential for blowing rain to enter (you can see it in the pic). The next trip up the mast, I’m going to volunteer myself – with my chair, ascender and big gulp of rum, I think I can make it. “Swim for the wreckage!”