May 29/2023: I originally had high hopes as I plotted to liberate Lunacy from Palmetto Bay Marina on Hilton Head Island to sail her north toward home waters. Long-range forecasts per both the ECMWF and GFS weather models showed strong rivers of southerly wind blasting up the East Coast, and I speculated I might even...
Oct. 4/2021: One thing I needed to take care of on Lunacy this past month was replacing the propeller zinc, the one anode on the boat that degrades fastest. I first tried doing this in the water, diving on the prop while Lunacy lay on her mooring in Portland, in what I call the lagoon...
After several delays the crew at Maine Yacht Center finally splashed Lunacy last Thursday. I then spent much of Friday and Saturday getting her ready to sail. Of course, I was very curious to see how she looks afloat with her new nose and was struck by how the angle of the deck's sheer line...
Lunacy's new bowsprit continues to evolve from concept to reality. I stopped by Maine Yacht Center this past Thursday to check out the latest wooden mock-up and was very pleased with what I saw. This latest iteration, as you can see, incorporates the vertical plate that will support the underside of the structure. (After pondering...
Project Proboscis is lurching ahead. On Wednesday afternoon I met with Brian Harris, Jeff Stack, and Will Rooks at Maine Yacht Center and we spent a good hour noodling over the design of Lunacy's new bowsprit. After much debate with myself and some consultation with others (including Scott Alexander at Selden Mast and Doug Pope...
As Martin Luther King once put it: I have a dream. His was most admirable; mine is a bit selfish. Pretty much ever since I acquired Lunacy, I've had visions of a bowsprit of some sort dangling off her bow. Something that would allow me both to fly an asymmetric spinnaker in a sock forward...
You'll recall we left the good ship Lunacy pining on a mooring in Bermuda (with a perfectly good starter), waiting for me to welcome home Reid Stowe AND preside over my mother's memorial service, so I could AT LAST return to the Onion Patch and sail her home. Stalwart crew member Jeff Bolster and...
One of the very first problems I had to cope with on Lunacy involved an uninvited guest who came along on the delivery trip home to New Hampshire from Florida, where I had purchased the boat. One of the other problems was that the engine stopped working, which is a theme we've discussed before. The...
While sailing Lunacy south in the fall of '08 my crew and I noticed there was some white sandy grit in the fresh water running out the taps when the boat was sailing in rough weather. The operative theory at the time was that this crud was just what it appeared to be: sand....
One of the things I did before sailing Lunacy down to the W'Indies for the winter was service all the winches onboard. I had been putting this off for years, but when the primaries in the cockpit started screaming at me whenever I trimmed the jib late last summer, I figured the time had...
