6 1/2 hours and we were out of the race, done, finished.  Not the way we expected to do in the 300 mile Everglades challenge. We had a good start off the beach and headed out on a Southeast tack in 14 to 16 knots of wind. Somewhere along that first tack we hit 11.9 knots. In the first 1/2 hour we noticed the boat was bow heavy and we were bringing spray into the forward cockpit, the first time that had ever happened. I was bailing from time to time to try to keep the water out and the boat light. Tacking West we cleared Egmont key trying to go Southwest against some 6′+ seas and building winds. Stingslikeabee was steering as I continued to try to move weight out of the bow  and keep water out. Our speeds kept dropping and we were only moving 5-6 knots with full canvas up. If we pitched up to go SW we lost even more speed. I thought the big seas were killing our speed so we tacked back towards Anna Maria island to go inside and down the ICW. As we approached Anna Maria we noticed we had only about 4-6″ of free board in the bow. Checking the aft hatch ( where you can look in to the bilge), we were full of water! We sailed on in and beached the boat on Anna Maria island in protected winds. I was able to pump 40 gallons ( 300 pounds) out the bilge area. There was still more, but with out being able to put the bow in the air ( like on a trailer) there was no way of getting the last 10-20 gallons out. Thinking we were some how leaking due to the pounding offshore, we took off headed down the ICW. 1 hour later we decided to reef as the wind was still increasing. Just after we had reefed, we took a gust, instead of listing slightly like a trimaran normally does, the bow went under water followed by the two cockpits and both amas! Only the stern stayed slightly above. With large fenders and dry bags up foward I knew she’d come back up. We both agreed we were under about 1 minute before she popped back up. We had to be full of water again! As I bailed the cockpits we sailed over to a small island and beached it again. We were full of water, again! At this point we knew something was really wrong and we could not continue. We called Chief and let him know that we were dropping out. Again we pumped as much as we could and then we moved everything of weight to the aft locker. We were going to sail down wind and did not want to bury the bow in any big seas. So we headed North back to Ft. Desoto and our trailer. Sailing North in 22-24 knots,we ran with just a reefed main and cruised at 7-8 knots and hit 9.1knots. 2 hours later we were on the trailer and headed home.

The next day I filled the Sailbird up from inside the bilge. There are no thru-hulls, holes or places water should be able to enter exempt the centerboard which was under a hull liner. I had expected water to come pouring out of the centerboard trunk as soon as I put water inside. Nothing. Added more water, nothing. Finally at close to the top of the centerboard trunk water stared pouring out. The next day I talked to some other Sailbird owners. There is a line that comes out the top of the centerboard and then up through the hull liner. This is so you can lift the centerboard when you get to the beach. There is between a 1/2 inch and 1″ gap betweem the centerboard and liner. Any water that comes through the rope hole goes into the bilge, not into the cockpit.  Since we had put most of our heavy gear forward, we had made the boat bow heavy right away. Between that and beating to weather, water had come through the centerboard line hole into the bilge. As the water entered the bilge, it kept making the bow sit lower and lower, pooling forward and making the water came in even faster.

The solution? So simple its stupid. You add a Anderson bailer ( used in small boats like a sunfish) to the hull in the bilge area. It sucks the water out as you are moving. Nothing to do but watch the water disapear.  For next year, we will move weight/gear aft and try to lighten the boat 100-150 pounds between crew, gear, food and the boat itself. 11.9 knots to weather showed that it will move.  Waterlogged with a extra 300-400 pounds of water inside and still hitting 9.1 knots bodes well for fast off the wind speeds. And I never got to fly my new reacher!

The count down clock to next March has started.

Groceries are bought and stored in dry bags based on lunch, dinner etc. Gear has been sorted and go over again. Larger fenders were bought this week to make sure we can get Big Red off the beach. Will pack the boat tonight and take it to the beach tomorrow. Brooke and I will launch at the boat ramp and sail it around just to make sure every line is correct, every bolt is tight, the rig is tuned. Hope to recruit a few guys to help drag it up. A lot easier on Sat going down the beach. Head winds for Sat will slow us down. Sunday we will have a nice tail wind and should be able to pick up some speed, time and distance. Florida Bay looks like strong head winds. Goals? With the current forecast and not getting lucky with a SW wind on Sat. my goals are as follows. About 70 miles to #1. Tacking against a head wind, and dropping the mast to get in to #1. Maybe 11:00 PM. Check point 2  is about 90 miles with wind behind us at some point on Sunday, lets say 2 PM on Sunday. Check point 3 another 70 or so. Again should have the tail wind so maybe 2 AM on Monday. Then we have Florida Bay. Because of the East winds we will probably go South than NE. That’s about 55 miles. With tacking up the ICW it will be slower. So a finish around 6 PM Monday. That’s a lot of “ifs”. We’ll see how we do……….

Pictures were to large to load, but here’s the pictures of the sanding and painting project.

http://share.shutterfly.com/share/received/welcome.sfly?fid=28a5edfaf9272588&sid=0AcMW7Ri0ZuGbC4A

When I bought my 18′ Sailbird Trimaran “the Bird” last Oct, I thought this would be easy to get ready for the EC. Just add sails and fix the rudder. But then I looked over the rigging and decided to replace it and beef it up by adding lower shrouds ( never had any).  After that I was advised to beef up the ama cross beam attachments and the chain plates as both have been know to crack and or leak. Several weekends of fiberglassing took care of those projects. Then there was the search for some used sails.  I wanted to see what I really had before investing in new ones. If the boat was a dog, it would get dumped and a search for something faster would be on. I found some used sails and the Bird passed the sailing test, but the self draining system left 3-4″ of water in the cockpit all the time. So after some research I added a “one way” drain system with a ping pong ball in it. To do this I added a thru hull, a drain hole in the cockpit floor and a access plate so I could reach the screws for the drain . It was supposed to allow water out, not in, didn’t work. Meanwhile I ordered my new Mylar main, jib and reacher. 4 weeks later I had sails. The main and jib were easy once we figured out lines, and out hauls and where to mount the boom vang. But how to mount fly the Reacher? I needed a bow sprit, so with some luck I tracked down 1/2 of a  windsurfer mast. Mounted the base with a U bolt forward to slide it through since it had to come off when it was on the trailer. Speaking of trailers, tires were no good, so bought new tires and rims, but 4 bolt pattern does not work with a 5 bolt hub, so took them back and bought bigger tires, much better! The bird also did not come with 1 piece of line. So 3 halyards, 2 sets of sheets, a mainsail sheet, dock lines, boom vang, out haul line, line for the trampolines that had never been installed. Oh, yeah, and the drain system….so I glassed in the holes for the drain system and raised the floor 3 inches. Now I need to add scuppers once I verify the location. And then there’s the leak….have always been fighting water inside the boat, kept blaming it on the bad drain system. Well the drain was leaking, but so was the boat. Found a crack in the hull, just forward of the centerboard trunk. It had let in 250 pounds of water ( 30 gallons) in 8 hours the last time out. The pool noodles I had put inside the hull had helped to keep it floating, scary thought!  SO we dewatered the boat and glassed the crack. Still had to add a wind vane and running lights. And the rudder that was broken? Had that fixed early on, but the tiller was to short so bought a tiller extension, then another since the first was to small. Did I mention that after all my fiberglass work the Amas were still leaking a bit, so caulking was in order for those last leaks. And with all this done, just 2 things left to do. Sand the hull, fair in the rough spots, prime it twice and paint it twice. Wait 7 days before splashing and do one last test sail.  The other project? Start getting us ready for the race… like gear, food, clothes, charts, lights, phones dry bags etc, still have about 24 days, why panic?

Stingslikeabee and I did our test sail on Sat. We downgraded from a 60 miler to 4 hours South and then back after the wind forecast changed on Friday. It had been 15-20 Knots from the East and changed to 10 from the SE and 3 Knots at sunset…. We left about 10 and tacked against a short chop, and foul current through the AM. Early afternoon it looked like the wind was starting to die so we turned and headed home. Hit 7.7 Knots with maybe 8-10 knots of wind. A hour later we were ghosting along under reacher and Main in 4 knots of wind still holding 2-3 knots boat speed. First time with the reacher and it worked excellent. Looking forward to trying it with some real wind. As were were sailing back I happen to look inside the aft hatch where we store gear. The boat had 5-6 inches of water in it! Was not concerned about sinking, just frustrated that we had taken on so much water. When we made it back to the dock and put it on the trailer we dumped between 25-30 gallons of water out, 250 pounds! I had actually added 3 pool noodles to the inside of the hull in the unusable area the night before. Figured just in case we ever hit something, they might help support the main hull. Well I think they were helping to hold us up. After getting “the Bird” home we filled the hull with water and discovered that water was leaking out of a hairline crack at the forward end of the centerboard trunk. Looks like 38 years of the centerboard hitting had finally cracked it. Started doing the fiberglass repair last night. Hoping for 1 more test sail before we paint the hulls. Also curious to test our speed with out the extra weigh inside since we were sailing close to wind speed while water logged.

Planning a training run this Sat. with my daughter and race partner Brooke “stingslikeabee”. Planning to leave Safety harbor in the AM and sail South through Tampa Bay, under the Skyway bridge, back up the West coast to Clearwater. Finishing on the ICW just inside and South of Clearwater. The trip is somewhere between 60 and 70 miles. That could be as little as 6 hours, or as long as 14……. Wind forecast is either 16 knots with gusts from the East ( perfect) or SW winds of 7 knots, ( not so perfect). In the last few days I tweaked the rudder to get rid of the vibration, added reflective tape, and added a Stern light. The stern light is good for boats going under 7 MPH, so I guess we need to add the red/green to the bow since we plan to go much faster . Also added the bases for the GOpro video camera so should have some cool video next week. Reworking the drain system and adding some flotation to the cockpit to make it dryer. Hope it works. If everything worksm and nothing breaks this weekend, we start painting next week, Orange, yellow or Black.

I went out with Dennis, my sail-maker from Banks Sails. We had winds of 15-18 knots just to make it interesting…… Below is a video as we first got started. Needed to do some tuning to the rig, the forestay was loose and the mast was bouncing around a bit. We were also hauling around a extra 150 pounds of water from the crappy drain system. Just as I turned on the camera we took a gust that buried the leeward ama. Talk about hitting the brakes! It got better after that with more sailing flat and faster. Still have a lot of tweaking to do and doing a 60-70 mile test sail this weekend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dpYASu36fc&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

I was thinking the other day about my first trip down the West coast of Florida 22 years ago. I was on a 5 ton, 30′ sailboat with worn out Dacron sails and getting excited at doing 4 knots. We had a loran for telling us where we were, a RDF ( Radio Direction Finder) for homing in on radio towers and plotting them on a chart and practiced dead reckoning for the whole trip.  By comparison the Everglades challenge will be done on a 18′, 400 pound trimaran with mylar sails and speeds of 12+ knots ( we hope). This years trip will have a set of tools/toys not ever thought about back then. A cell phone, a Droid with full access to the Internet, text, weather forecasts tide tables, Facebook and email; 2 handheld GPS’s ( one with a built in chart plotter) that tell us where we are, how fast we are moving, tides, average speeds, max speeds etc.  A SPOT ( uses GPS ) for tracking us, telling anyone with a computer where we are and how fast ( or slow) we are going. Then throw in some of the other improvements like a hand held, waterproof, floating VHF.  And Dry Suits, so the wetness of the boat does not matter.  Our Tri uses LED lights that are twice as bright as the old Nav. lights and seem to last for ever. We use inflatable PDF’s instead of the bulky PDF of the past that no one ever wore. I bring along a Leatherman that replaces many of the tools that used to be in my tool box. Waterproof charts have replaced paper charts. It used to be cameras on boats were like rolling the dice because of moisture, now we have waterproof cameras like the GOPro’s to take pictures or video of all the fun we are having. We have all kinds of cool clothes like water wicking shirts that make life on a small boat easier. It really makes one wonder how we managed on boats back then. And maybe, just maybe it really was not the “Good Old Days”

Getting in to the home stretch for projects on the “Bird”. Still need to confirm the drain system, caulk the amas, add the bow sprit guides and put on the attachment pads for the new GO-pro camera. At least we’ll have cool video of this race . Adding the dodger next week. Then plan to repaint the boat either yellow or black and add some reflective tape so we can be seen at night. The black sails don’t exactly show well in the dark. Started working on the food list and fine tuning the equipment list. Would still like to add a better paddling system than the current canoe paddles. Might try a oar(s) next time out. I know we can move 2 knots in flat calm, but still need more paddle power just in case…….The conditioning of the old body is coming along well, with running , walking, kayaking and the gym. Starting to see results, should have started a few more months back.