Sailing Vessel Triteia - The First Sail - Episode 10 - Sailing off the coast of California

Hello, hello. We finally get to go sailing. It felt like forever. It was three months to the exact day that I bought her that I finally got to take her out of the slip and get her out on the Pacific, see how she handled. I got my first experience with what locals call Hurricane Gulch, which is right at the lighthouse, the winds are insane because there's a mountain or hill or whatever, Palos Verdes, makes the winds just kind of crazy right there. It can easily be like 10, 12 knots out just a little ways offshore, but right in that area, it can be 15, 17, 20 knots. So I experienced that for the first time. But everything went off without a hitch. There was a little excitement with some water cruising around the cabin sole, which turned out fine, but it was very alarming. At the time, I thought it was the seacock for the head. It turned out to be the freshwater tank is leaking somewhere. Still haven't figured out where, but if the tank's full and I'm on a starboard tack, it leaks water, so maybe it's one of the top fittings, but it's all glassed in under the fee berth, so it's gonna take some doing to figure out where the leak is. It's a project for another day. So here's the sailing video. Many, many videos to come after this. I have a lot of projects coming up. I'll be doing a boat tour video soon, show you what I've been up to. We're almost caught up to real time. I know a lot of people were shocked that this was shot a few months ago, but that's just the reality of it. And I wanted to make sure that I had a successful, cohesive block of videos so that I didn't have to be like, oh man, leave people hanging. So I shot a ton of video before I started editing and putting them out there. But coming up, I'll be doing the anchor locker, glassing in a shelf and everything for that, putting in my manual windlass, installing my bow roller, the deck pipe and that entire setup. I've already started shooting footage of me putting in the holding tank and redoing the head, like redoing everything on that. So that's quite an adventure. And tons of other projects coming up. So I set a good deadline for myself. I wanna spend Christmas and to New Year's at the Channel Islands under anchor. So I gotta push hard to get everything done to be able to do that comfortably and safely and spend some time exploring out there. So here's a video. Thanks for hanging out and thanks for watching. And everyone that's watched all the videos, here we are, finally getting to sail. It's great. So here you go. We're taking the boat out for the first motor in the harbor right now. See how it does under power. Hopefully everything goes great. If it does, tomorrow we have our first sail. So here we go. Seven o'clock, July 28th. So we're out motoring. First time we've had the boat out. First time this boat's been out of its slip in more than six years to my knowledge. We're like 2,000 RPM. We're doing like two knots because there's so much growth on the bottom even though I scraped it like two weeks ago. Need a new bottom job for sure. But this is our first time out to check the engine, see how it does. We're out a bit. If all goes well, then tomorrow we're gonna do our shakedown sail. Scenic Los Angeles harbor. Very beautiful setting. Very Instagrammable. Lots of girls in bikinis around and oil tankers and recycling plants. Just went through the sail inventory. The last one up was the Reacher. It's really nice, light wind sail. Have a pretty good 155. The jib's really shy. I think it came off another boat. Doesn't feel like it's made for this boat. So probably get a different jib. But yeah, get us going for now. So the boat did great today under motor. Just cruised around in the basin and started getting dark so we headed back. But did great. Super slow, zero to 60 in 400 days maybe. So get the bottom clean, speed it up. Yeah, we're set for our shakedown sail. So we're here at the boat. I'm gonna go down, scrub off some of the beard. Then we're gonna take it out for the shakedown sail. Pretty excited. Good wind today. Take our time, get out there. See how she feels. Here we go. Today's the day. It's three months to the day. It's July 29th. I bought the boat on April 29th. So a little slower than I wished, but here we are. What? No. Time under sail. It's holding good. A lot of wind out. I don't know how much it is right now, but it feels good. Track's good. Sail for a while. Got some water in the cabin. Looks like it's coming from the head. So we turned off the seacocks. Make sure that that's all happy, feel lucky. Little sunny day. The coast of San Pedro. Looks like there's a race going on. Some big boats out. It's a jeerly sail. Saw a whale. They're helping him. Caught up in a fishing net. Wearing animal rescue on the case. They're gonna get him taken care of. I'm gonna take care of the sandwich. Made our tack, heading back in. Strong winds out today. Fourteen to ten knots. Sailing really well. Feels good. Nice day. Happy with how she handles. Went out for the shakedown sail of the day. Everything went great. The wind picked up quite a bit. It was 16 knots when we came in with gusts of 20. And she stood up great. No problem. It was nice to see how she handled in bigger winds like that. So that was good. The only thing that was alarming was the seacock to the head was leaking. We shut it off and it didn't seem, it was a little bit wild to look down and there's water cruising in the cabin, but it turned out fine. Mattel shut it off. After that, it was no big deal. But the engine ran perfectly all day. Started right up at sea, brought us back in. So our Navionics said our fastest speed was like six knots. So that's pretty good considering how much growth is on the bottom and stuff. But yeah, it was a great day. Really good. Really happy with the boat. Definitely wanna get a better jib. We used like the 155 today and it was probably overpowered for the amount of wind we had. There's no roller furling on this boat, so it's all hank on. So you can't just trim it in. So yeah, great time. Looking forward to more sails. On the next episode, you'll see me test out and tune up and spruce up an outboard I bought in the parking lot for $80. I happen to have an identical one I'd pulled out of the sea a year before and switched out a number of parts, making the new one a little better, before doing some fiberglass repairs on an old Sabot I had and testing out the pair in preparation for an upcoming trip to Catalina Island. Thanks for watching and thanks for all your comments. And until next time.