First Sail

Today was finally the big day, our first sail aboard On the Brink! We have been watching the weather since Memorial Day weekend the and forecast was always storms and rain, not exactly good weather for our first sail. However around noon today the sky cleared up the the forecast pointed to a window this evening of good weather (clear skies, 10mph winds out of the south with 1' seas). My older sister is in town from Oklahoma so we invited her and my mother along for the ride.

After getting everyone aboard we got the 125 genoa hanked on and settled on the deck before warming up the motor and heading out. The winds near shore were primarily out of the south so we raised the sails right out of the harbor. The main came up with no problems as well as the jib. We had some trouble tying off the jib halyard but eventually got it settled on the right cleat. With the sails settled we shut down the motor and let it go. At first we didn't have enough speed to turn off of the wind and had to jibe towards land before finally heading out.

Once on the correct tack we were able to head out on a broad reach for approximately a mile. This was a great time to start getting a feel for the boat and how she handles. Most notable to me was how much the centerboard helped reduce weather helm to almost nothing. Tacking back was another lesson in speed, I didn't bring the tiller over far enough and we lost steering before we could complete the tack and had to make a second attempt.

Back near the harbor we were able to head up and drop the sails. Once secured we headed back to the dock. Docking was another adventure since for the first time the weather was blowing us into the dock. On the first attempt we came up short and ended up hitting the dock and needing to come back around. The second attempt was much better and counts as one of the best dockings so far (this will take practice).

After a few sandwiches and celebratory beers while watching the sun set and the city lights come up we called it a night and headed back to shore. I'd say our first sail On the Brink was a great success and am looking forward to many more.

As an aside there are a few things I need to look into:
1) the motor is still troublesome, I think I need a new water pump and for some reason idle is really uneven and the throttle does nothing. This will take some work.
2) We need to figure out how to fold the jib at the dock instead of just stuffing into the bag.
3) The main has no tell tales and the jib could use a few in better places.
4) The main is missing battens, oops I'll pop those in next time.

Launching On The Brink

Finally our long journey was over, now a new chapter could begin it's time to launch our Tartan 27. At Burnham Harbor in Chicago they have a boat ramp for just this occasion. The lake is currently about 21" low and despite the warnings of the marina operators I opted to try and launch my Tartan 27 at the boat ramp. With the help of a few friends this was a success... eventually.

I started by rigging up a few control lines to the boat to help guide her off of her trailer once floating. Next up was backing ever so slowly down the ramp. The boat and trailer cleared the walls of the ramp by about six inches which made the reversing a rather slow and white knuckle experience but finally we were in the water with the trailer

All was going well, slow backing up getting the rudder wet, then the prop, then the whole hull then... thud! I had hit the parking block placed at the bottom of the ramp to keep trailers from backing too far in. I still needed probably about three inches more water, if only the lake wasn't so low. I remembered that I had total replacement insurance and decided that come hell or low water I was launching this boat. I pushed back and rolled the first of three axles over the parking block and got a few inches deeper when... thud! I had hit the second set of wheels on the block. The boat was only inches from floating free and I wasn't willing to go deeper. The water was nearly up to the door sills on the truck and I was hopelessly stuck with little traction.

At this point in complete desperation my wife jumped onto the trailer and started kicking the boat backwards... kick by kick I could see the boat slowly slipping backwards into the water. FINALLY! it was free and floating! We managed to wrangle the boat away from the trailer and tied it up safely to the touch and go dock.

During this entire escapade we had begun to draw a crowd and given quite a show. The kicking in particular raised a few cheers and a round of applause when the boat finally came free. Luckily for the onlookers the show had just begun. I now had a rental truck backed deep into water with a trailer that was stuck over a parking block in Lake Michigan. I tried pulling and pulling in 4WD, 4WD low, first gear, second gear... all with no luck, the trailer was going nowhere and with all of my wheels in the water I was at a distinct disadvantage for pulling this trailer from the water.

Once again I remembered that I had purchased the insurance when renting this truck... let's get our money's worth! I backed the truck in as far as she would go to the second set of trailer wheels and slammed it into gear. After one of the worst noises I've ever heard from a transmission, a giant thud and whiplash inducing jerk the trailer popped up and over the parking block... I was free!

We settled everything down and the harbor was nice enough to let us get a walk-up slip for the evening. The first night in Chicago and my Tartan 27 would float in the lap of luxury in Burhham harbor next to a mega-yacht... it looked like a dinghy but I don't care, my boat is finally home.

The long Haul... driving 250 miles with my T27 in tow

Everything that could be easily repaired in the spring was repaired and it was time to launch the boat and finally enjoy her... one problem: my boat was in Bloomington, IN and I live in Chicago, IL. Luckily I purchased a trailer with the boat so this was going to be easy, or so I thought.

On one of my trips down to Bloomington to work on the boat I had the tires on the trailer replaced and I checked the wiring. I didn't know much about trailers and these seemed to be sufficient to make the trailer safe to tow... boy was I wrong.

I convinced a co-worker of mine who owns an Chevy 2500 to drive down with me and tow the boat back to Chicago; she agreed and we left at 6AM on a Saturday to make the trip. Upon arrival in Bloomington in the pouring rain my world quickly came crashing down around me. My coworker informed me of some rather serious safety concerns: 1) the trailer coupler was old and had had now way of locking into position on the ball of the truck. 2) The chains were old, rusted and the shackles didn't look very safe. 3) the icing in the cake came with the trailer wiring and brakes.

On the bright sunny day I tested them everything was fine. However now in the rain the wiring was shorting out and the brakes wouldn't work. Needless to say we weren't towing anything that day. To add insult to injury the normally 4 hour drive took closer to 7 on the way home due to a pair of fatal accidents that closed I65 for two hours.

I made another trip down a week later determined to resolve all of these issues. I ground off the old coupler and installed a brand new bolt on coupler capable of towing 15,000 lbs. I installed new chains and replaced all of the wiring and even the trailer lights. To be doubly safe I even installed a breakaway box for safety should the worst occur. It is now essentially a new trailer with the exception of the brakes and bearings. I setup for a professional transporter to meet me on out at the boat before starting the haul. Unfortunately he blew the transmission on his truck and couldn't make it out for a few more days... so much for seeing the boat off safely.

Two days later I got a call from the transporter, he was at the boat ready to haul but had some concerns. He felt that the boat was sitting too far back on the trailer and that there was insufficent tongue weight to safely haul the boat... not another problem! I headed back down to bloomington to once again resolve a problem with the trailer, I've now officially spent more time working on the trailer than on the boat and was just beginning.

Down in Bloomington I hired a second larger crane to lift the boat and place her forward on the trailer. At the last minute the crane operator called to tell me he wasn't comfortable making the lift and declined the job. I was able however to get in touch with another local who would be happy to launch the boat at a local boat ramp where we could then pull her further up on the trailer. The plan went off well and we moved the boat nearly two feet forward, the tongue weight was perfect and I was all set to once again haul the boat up to her waiting dock in Chicago.

After calling up my transporter to setup another date I was dismayed to find out that he could no longer tow my boat since he was in tennessee working on a job and could not commit to a date to return. This is when the stubborn part of my personality kicked in... I got off of the phone and made a few calls to rent a truck to do it myself. As a note, I've never towed anything and can count on one hand the number of times I've driven anything bigger than a Chevy Malibu, I am completely un-qualified to tow a 7400# boat and 1500# trailer.

When renting the truck I was careful to get the total replacement insurance... better be safe than sorry especially when you are playing so far out of your own league. My wife and I left on a friday night and slept in the truck about half way down to bloomington. Upon our arrival at sunrise we found one of the brand spanking new tires on the trailer was flat. Luckily everything was under warranty and a truck came out for free to make the fix. We were finally off and I quickly learned the ropes of hauling such a large load up and down the valley roads.

I finally got to the highway and was excited that the winding roads were behind me and nothing but interstates and major highways was ahead... easy driving! At least that's what I hoped, about thirty seconds into the highway leg of the trip I learned quite a bit about towing things. I felt the steering wheel getting a bit squirley and looked in the side mirrors... I could see the rudder of the boat swinging back and forth! The boat was fishtailing probably 5 feet to either side at 50mph... this was not safe. I somehow managed to keep control of the truck and trailer and promptly pulled off of the highway. Here I am in the middle of nowhere completely outclassed by my own inexperience and the very large load I was hauling.

There was only one option open to us... go slow... very slow. We switched to back roads to take us back home along US41 where there was no speed minimum and the road was very straight and led directly to burnham harbor. The journey went from a 60mph, 5 hour trip to a 30mph 10 hour crawl to Chicago. After 10 hours of white knuckles we were finally in Chicago. The clouds literally parted and the sun came out as we pulled into Burnham harbor...

Getting ready for the first season #3 - The mast

I needed to unstep the mast in preparation for transportation from bloomington to Chicago in the spring. An initial attempt was to use the gin pole at the Lake Monroe Sailing Association where the boat was being stored. This came with some poor results, the pole was plenty tall but the winch box was too small and the mast didn't come up far enough to clear the cabin top. The idea was scrapped and I would need to hire a crane on my next trip down to Bloomington.

Finally the day came and I met a small sign truck out at the sailing association to pull the mast. The work took all of 30 minutes from setup to completion and I was very happy to finally have the mast down. Unfortunately I did discover my first structural issue. The mast foot was completely rotten out after years of sitting water. The design is one of the flaws of these boats. In this area the bilge is nearly flat which makes installation of a wood block rather easy. Unfortunately, the block serves as a dam for any water forward of the mast, additionally water running down the mast will collect on this block causing quite a bit of rotting. In my case the foot was nothing but pulp. I got the photo below from a member of the Tartan 27 yahoo group from when he rebuilt his whole interior.

In my case I elected to use a few pieces of trex from the local hardware store. The trex built up nicely to the right height and has two advantages I like. 1) being plastic I don't need to worry about rot! 2) the trex is largely hollow which provides a path for water trapped forward of the mast to drain back to the main blige. I've heard about other owners building up epoxy or just making a replacement with a piece of teak. Both I'm sure are successful however I wanted to try something new and potentially innovative.

Getting ready for the first season #2 - Bottom Paint

The next step in preparing for the summer was addressing the bottom of the boat. Over the previous season it was clear that the owner applied a soft VC-17 paint for anti-fouling.

The paint job looked ok and I was considering just removing any loose spots and reapplying VC-17. However I wanted to learn about any past sins and decided to sand the bottom down. I started with some 200 grid paper and went to town. The VC17 came off relatively easy and revealed a hard coat of copper colored paint. I figured this as Interlux fiberglass bottomkote in racing bronze based on the old cans left on board. I decided that since I was already sanding to bring the bottom down all of the way and sanded off even this coat as best as I could. I didn't want to go too deep since the previous owner told me he had it barrier coated only a few years ago. The photo below shows the results of the sanding. As a lesson learned, next time I'm using an orbital sander with vacuume attachment, the dust was aweful and my respirator barely did anything to help. At the end of the day I was completely covered in nasty black dust that I'm sure cut a few years from my life.

Once everything was sanded down and relatively smooth I decided to go back with the same interlux fiberglass bottomkote product. I didn't want to worry about compatibility plus I really like the look of a bronze bottom paint. I think the overall results were spectacular. The product says that it only needs to be reapplied every other year. This seems a bit aggressive so I'll pay lots of attention this summer and fall to determine how effective the coat is in preventing algae growth.

Getting ready for the first season #1... survey and quick fixes

After the purchase of our "New" to me Tartan 27 I headed down to Bloomington to assess the condition of the boat and begin preparations to being the boat up to Chicago and get her sailing. Upon first inspection I learned that the seller was correct, my boat was in exceptional condition given her age. No major structural issues, good sails and in ok cosmetic shape. The main fixes I learned about were:

1) The port and starboard lazarette hatches were both cracked at the hinge and needed replacement
2) The front cabin top hatch needed repair and the main sliding hatch was delaminating
3) The teak rub rails were cracked in a few places and need replacements
4) The wiring was a complete mess
3) The trailer needed some TLC to be road worthy (more on this in a later post)

I didn't have the resources to replace the lazarette hatches properly. A replacement was available from Tartan for $400 each which was much too rich for my blood. I was able to remove the broken ones and make quick replacements from some plywood, these will have to suffice for the first season until I can make something more permanent.

The front hatch was a bad repair on the part of the previous owner, just a piece of plexi crewdly screwed onto the old frame. The plexi was cracked and leaking into the v-birth below. I caulked the crack and started taking measurements to eventually replace this with a new teak hatch, hopefully with a small skylight next winter. I'll probably end up doing something later this summer to make it look better but for now the hatch isn't leaking.The main companionway hatch is another story. The hatch is the original fiberglass and teak one and the teak is peeling up. Again, I think this will be a winter project to replace. I would like a nice teak one to match the rest of the bright work on the boat.

I was able however to attack the wiring right away. I started trying to sort out what ran to what but soon realized that over the course of 40 years the wiring was a complete rats nest and ended up completely replacing the wiring. In retrospect I did some things well and I would do a few differently in the future. I moved the negative block into the wiring box and repulled all wiring to the block and around the boat. on the positive side I simply repulled everything to the switches adjacent to the negative block. I like having all of the wiring terminations in one place, it makes changing things and troubleshooting easy. The downside is that the box is absolutely stuffed with wiring and will soon become a mess. I'm thinking this may be another winter project if I get the time. I really want to think it through and make the wiring clean and simple with the main goal of being nearly invisible and easy to change if needed.

Buying my first boat

After getting married I started to look at sailboats that were for sail. I was never really looking to buy one, more of entertaining some happy fantasy. However as I fear happens all to often these fantasies started turning into actual searches for a boat to buy. I was a few years out of school and looking for a new hobby to distract me from the daily grind of work. I was convinced however not to just buy the first boat that looked reasonable, it was to be a big investment and I wanted it to be right.

At first I really liked the lines and great reputation of Cal 25 and Cal 27 sailboats. My research told me that they were very well built and reliable boats with few inherent problems. A few Cal 25's were for sale in the area but I never quite had the money to buy one... on to more fantasy of owning a sailboat. As a few years passed I was starting to give up on the idea of owning a sailboat until one bored afternoon at work.

It was the awkward week between Christmas and New Years and work was slow. I was stuck on a job-site since my superintendent was off for the holiday. I resorted to searching for my favorite things online: sailboats. My go to was http://www.sailboatlistings.com/ to find boats in the area that were for sale. Most importantly boats that had been donated were shown so there were typically some good deals to be found. On that day there was nothing new or interesting so I gave ebay a shot not really expecting to find anything but hey it would kill a few minutes of this long boring day. I ended up coming across an auction that was ending in only a few hours... a 1971 Tartan 27 for sale in Bloomington, IN. It seemed almost too perfect.

I did some quick research and found out that these boats were generally very well built and reliable. In fact as the first fiberglass boats to be made by Tartan they were rather overbuilt and very sturdy boats. I emailed the seller a few basic questions and got immediate responses about the good condition of the boat; no soft spots, engine ran, good sails and sailed last summer. Best of all the boat was on a trailer. Now was the hard part, convincing my wife to let me blow most of my Christmas bonus on a giant toy. She consented and I placed a bid for what I felt would be a complete steal... $3000. For a 27 boat and trailer the seller would be nuts to accept the bid. As it turns out he was nuts, I won and got the boat for a song.

Developing a passion for sailing

For as long as I can remember my grandfather has owned a sailboat and has taken the family sailing on many occasions. Grandpa started out in sailing well before my birth with an O'day 24 which he trailered between various small lakes in Wisconsin and Lake Michigan. At some point prior to my birth he upgraded to the boat I learned to sail on; a 70's era Erickson 32 named Ode to Joy.

Growing up I have a few memories of sailing with the family, the most notable is being too small for my legs to reach across the cockpit and nearly getting thrown overboard when switching tacks one time. Another memory is sitting on the port (funny how you remember the small details) rail with my father dangling our feet in the water and enjoying the spray as we were sailing along. At some point I think I got too old and certainly too cool to go sailing with my family and I didn't step foot on the boat for probably 6 or 8 years during middle school and high school. I got reaquainted during college with sailing when I brought my then girlfriend now wife up to Wisconsin to meet my grandparents, we went sailing and had a blast.

From there we went up to Milwaukee to sail with grandpa a few times a year. My dad and I started making trips up to visit and go sailing. I think the opportunity to reunite and bond with my family was more important than learning to sail. Now and forever I'll relate sailing to bonding with family and all of the great associated feelings... I developed a passion for sailing

First post; let's call it a mission statement

Hello internet,

This is a great many firsts for me; first sailboat, first blog and first post. As such I'm not quite sure where to begin. I suppose that the best place to start is with a mission statement of sorts for this blog. That way I know what to focus on and you as readers know what to expect from me. Primarily I would like to use this blog to share my story as it relates to sailing; owning my first sailboat and as a tribute to what I hope will be a great relationship with a 42 year old boat named On the Brink. I want people to come to this blog eventually to learn from my own story and to share their own stories about sailboat ownership, sailing and Tartan 27's in particular.

I'll be making quite a few posts today so stay tuned for the backstory of what got me to today...