The Feel-Good Episode | Sailing Soulianis - Ep. 106

Welcome back to Sailing Soulianis. I'm Lauren, this is Kirk and Renata. We just kicked off our fourth cruising season and are enjoying our first island anchorage at Cayo Costa on the west coast of Florida. There's this cloud. It's doing it. It's making me happy. Are you high on life right now? I am high on life. High as a kite. We are so lucky to be doing this, especially with our little baby girl. We're usually always just trying to get south, but this year, considering our new crew member, we plan to practice an extreme version of going with the flow. Oh, there he goes. He can help himself apparently. All right then. Come along as we raise the sails and go wherever the wind takes us. Oh no, there it is. Clear water. And as we tool around in the dinghy at sunset, coming up with arguably better names for other boats. Whoever owns that clear water from Dakota, Florida, we highly suggest you rename your boat Nanners. I made a dire mistake. We've got a beautiful day here for a nice downwind sail, about 40 miles from Cayo Costa to Venice. We had perfect wind conditions set up to allow us to head north instead of south. So we got out to Cayo Costa. We said, if the winds are going north, we're going north. If they're going south, let's head south. We're not doing any upwind sailing or trying to minimize upwind sailing with a baby. Just trying to stay comfortable, stay relaxed, stay flexible this year. But the reason we're excited to head north is... Whoop, actually we're not going to tell you just yet. All will be revealed in upcoming episodes. We have perfect winds to head north. So we're going to about face here and hoist the sails for a beautiful downwind run today. I'm crying on the inside. Yeah. I'm so happy right now. She's being gently rocked to sleep. Yeah, I was really worried about today because our last sail, she was not happy for the second half of it. And she was not sleeping. And she was not sleeping. Well, we're still only 20 minutes into it. I know, but if this works, this could be the ticket. Happy baby is happy mama. Yeah. Are we going too slow? That was just a touch too slow. That's what I think. You need to kick it up a couple knots. Oh, I got her. Okay. This is magic. This is a sail I do not want to end. Downwind sailing with a sleeping baby. Yeah. I wish we could have filmed everything that happened today. It's been a good sail. Yeah. We need a third person aboard. Yep, we need a crew member. Renata, you got to grow up fast. Yeah. And an auto home would work. An auto home would be good. That would be really good. That would make things a lot. So we made pretty good time, eh? We did. Yeah. Yeah, we did. We spent, what, three days anchored right there? Two years ago, we anchored right in the middle of this channel. The current rips through here and it changes direction twice a day. It was a bit of a wild ride. It's such a carnival of a place. Yeah, it is. Hi, how are you? We've had a mostly chill day here on Soulianis today. We are anchored in Little Sarasota Bay. Lauren's been editing. She's got a new standing desk set up so that she can keep working while taking care of Renata. Renata's been a little bit fussy the last couple of days. I think she's just tired and hot and maybe going through a growth spurt and being a baby. Literally, not like I'm calling her a baby. She just slept 45 minutes. Yeah? Yeah. Face down like that, right? How was your nap? Was it okay? Was it okay? I've been up here taking measurements and splicing and working on some hardware for the boat. We had a pretty sweet downwind sail up here to Sarasota and we've got this pretty nifty little setup that we wrap around our forestay to tack the spinnaker to the forestay so that it works a little bit more like a gennaker. But it's got these really fiddly old bronze weird clasps that are really hard to work with on this metal cable and it's just been a pain in the butt. So I am splicing together a Dyneema soft shackle and a loop so that it's easier to work with up on the bow and isn't going to snag our sail on any metal bits. Check out this sweet new thing that I made. Yeah. Splicing's cool. This is our second take. The first time Kirk explained his finished product, I told him that he sounded like Eeyore. Here's what you get now. Radical soft shackle. Soft shackles save lives and are better because they don't corrode and you can replace them for cheap with line and you can do it yourself anytime you don't need to go to a part store because they're radical soft shackles. Is that more appropriate? Old. New. Here you go Renata. Here's a new toy. Get it. Wave to the main cat. Hi main cat. Your jammies are a little too big. Hi baby girl. Okay you ready? Yeah. Going in. Going in. Into the computer. The files are in the computer. Okay ready? Ready. We wanted to inspect the nuts, washers, and bolts to make sure they were... She just wants to see the camera now. Okay go. We're still recording. The last thing we want is a rudderless ship. You peaked. Is a rudderless ship. Say the whole thing over. We wanted to inspect the nuts, washers, and bolts to make sure they were still in decent shape. The last thing we want is a rudderless ship. Should we hold them or fold them? She says we're not playing poker. Yeah. So we have a pair for two. See those are both nines and then we use a different nine and so we have 15 for six. So we scored six points. So I've got two. Renata are you paying attention? This is 15 for two. We tied mommy. That's still a win in my book. Yay. You guys are fast. So this bridge waited for us to open because there were two sailboats waiting here and we were just a little bit behind. It was the nicest thing. We were, well we weren't way back there, but we were back there and Kirk's like okay we just need two more cars to go over and then we'll have enough time to get there to close the gap and then all of a sudden we heard on the radio the bridge tender said third sailboat we're gonna wait for you without even us calling or anything. How nice. That was super nice. That almost never happens. Yeah that's the first time it's ever You ready to go out in the gulf? I'm ready. Oh it looks nice. Yeah. Can you clip me in? I'll clip you in. I need two hands though. Amazing. The seas are just perfectly calm. 12 to 15 knot wind beam reaching right now. Maybe a little uh a little forward a little close That sail looks beautiful though. Conditions are even better than predicted. All right because we are right offshore. So we are racing an island packet today. We've got Captain Lauren at the helm, first mate Renata, and videographer Kirk. We're gonna have to play a strategy game here So what's our strategy, cameraman Kirk? Hold tight to shore so that we sail a shorter path when the wind shifts to the east we don't have to beat into it as much right now. Strategy looks to be about dead even. Check in in an hour. Sorry Renata, did I scare you? Yeah. You can go back to sleep baby. Go back to sleep. That was so cool. I was just telling Kirk that I'm pretty amped right now. He wouldn't really know it because I'm sitting here not talking very much but this sail is amazing. Kirk and I are just talking about future plans and actually having an adult conversation about our goals and dreams and while our little one sleeps soundly. Should I say the cliche? Doesn't get much better than this. Like in all seriousness this is this is pretty perfect. You got to remember these days because they're definitely not all like this and we're caning. So we're just editing a video right now where I'm bemoaning our centerboard. This centerboard man, I don't know if it's worth it because we had to get up at like 5 30 in the morning. It is 7 a.m. Try and manhandle it back into its trunk before we launched last year. Yay centerboards. But right now this centerboard is worth its weight in gold because we have winds out of the east today and we are heading sort of south southeast trying to hug the coast as close as possible so that we don't have to tack back up into the wind to go in through the channel this evening. And we are holding, actually we're doing better than our course in absolute flat comb seas and smoking the island packet which is being ever so quickly blown further and further offshore. So hooray centerboards. Oh we are definitely heeled over. We just did our first reef with the new mainsail. We put in a much deeper reef than the old sail and unfortunately we don't have a wind vane right now. I don't know it's probably between 15 and gusting maybe closer to 20. So we have a little bit deeper reef than the last sail and I think it's perfect because it's 6'6". But we reefed right when we felt like we needed to right as the boat was being overpowered and the boat feels perfectly balanced with that with that reef so it was a perfect position. So much perfection. Perfection. Good job Precision. Thanks for helping us out with this new sail. Good downwind baby. Our boat wasn't even moving even with the anchor all the way above the water line. You are super mom. Yeah. And the trip has officially begun.