Every Day CAN'T be Like THIS… | Sailing Soulianis - Ep. 96

Last time on Sailing Soulianis. We sailed overnight from Marathon in the Keys up to Marco Island. The wind is back! With two named tropical storms already in the books for the season and a third developing on the other side of the Gulf of Mexico, we decided to waste no time getting the boat hauled out and safely strapped down on land. I don't think we've ever left immediately a day after an overnight sail, like the morning after an overnight sail. First nights it's impossible to be in any sort of rhythm or get much rest and especially with our autohelm not working, we're just exhausted. And usually that makes me very grumpy if we have to do anything the day after an overnight sail. The winds are predicting 11 knots right now on the Gulf and it's only going to drop two single digits. So we got to leave now. We got to take advantage of it. Fortunately, when we got out of bed this morning at 6 30, I had already gotten I think eight hours of sleep because I went to bed early enough last night. So that makes me very happy. Should be a really nice downwind sail up to Fort Myers, only 30 some miles and hopefully get in and drop the hook and get some work done, which is what we're supposed to do today. Are you ready to hoist? Yeah. Once Soleanas is put to bed, Kirk and I plan to spend the summer in the Midwest before the arrival of our baby. But first, we've got some sailing to do. Okay, now we just need to get the blower off. We're good. Yeah. Without you trimming yet. Nice. Well, the main is just about trimmed. We can travel her out a little bit. Kurt, I think you're falling off way to the left. That looks better. Is that our course? It's hard to trim sails to a course when the navigator isn't holding a course. When the skipper is just veering all over the place. Well, the main looks good. Let's check Mr. Jib. Hey, Jibby guy, how are you doing? This is a big ass long clip that you're going to hate me for. How's that? What's our speed now? Is that an increase? All right. Five-oh. Have fun editing this five-minute clip, bird. What did you say yesterday? Now we're cooking with fire? Yeah, now we're cooking with fire. Or gas or whatever you want to cook with. Let's make a little oatmeal while we're underway. It is a beautiful day. Absolutely gorgeous. We got 10, 11 knots. Full sail up. Beam reach. Boat is just gently moving. And then after breakfast, when it feels like we're slowing down a little bit, I think we should light this thing. So far this morning, this has been an awesome sail. We've got just enough wind to do about six knots of boat speed in almost flat calm water. We've got both of our lines out and a hand line trolling. And we've seen a little bit of action. There's been a couple of fish that have come up to investigate, but no takers just yet. So the full recipe for this oatmeal is, we like to throw a lot of stuff in our oatmeal. Jazz things up a bit. Steel cut oats, apple, raisin, cinnamon, just a tiny bit of cloves. A real tiny bit of cloves. I actually grated some nutmeg in here, love. Oh, chia seeds. That's the secret ingredient. Add a little extra protein. And milk. What is this sorcery? Is auto working? Yeah. It's pretty much because there's like... Oh, you jinxed them. Are you serious? You jinxed them. Birdie. Oh, and I thought we were going to be able to enjoy our oatmeal together. There's like no pressure on him whatsoever. Yeah. I think that time that was the handle popped off. Try this again. Yeah. If there were ever perfect sailing, is this what it would look like? I can't imagine anything better. Well, all right. Maybe the water could be clearer. Like sure, we can nitpick, but... Sure. This is pretty darn good. Six knots of boat speed in flat calm water. Yeah. Auto is actually working. Is this flat calm? Oh, yeah. We just discussed. This is a light chop. Does that look like a light chop? I think so. Yeah, we rigged auto. We tied his hands behind his back. There's a little lever that would just start to inch its way up and then come undone. And then the wheel would spin and... No, he can't give up. He's tied to the helm. He can only give up if he decides in his brain to give up, because that's his other way of giving up. Just because there's like... Oh, you jinxed him. Are you serious? Beeping at us and then basically just giving up the course. So, holding for now. Look at that fresh six-six. Six-six of boat speed? No way. What? It doesn't even feel like we're moving. I know. That's pretty awesome. This is how sailing is supposed to be. False alarm. What an incredible sail so far. Every day can't be like this because it would make it not so special, but man, when they come along, it is awesome. Auto's still chugging away, huh? Yeah. Maybe we fixed one of his issues. The arm? Yeah, we just need to make sure we can take it off quickly enough. I don't know, I think the way that you tied it makes it easy to pull it off. Right. I've been sitting here thinking about how I've had the opportunity to just think. Really cool. So meta. These seas especially are just perfect for me. As soon as it gets a little bit more wavy, if we have to go into the wind or we have to go downwind, I'm always on edge thinking I'm gonna start feeling seasick. And I usually have some level of uneasiness in my stomach at all times. I don't feel a thing right now. When you say these seas, you mean flat calm? Light chop? A light chop. Yeah. Yeah, love. I'm not a hardy sailor. At least on a monohull. End scene. Okay, socks going up. Oh yeah, we need to do that, don't we? This way. Inside the rigging. Forestick. Touch that guy in there. Hoisting. We're doing 3-3 right now. And the wind is about at our beam. And that's about as far as we can go. So after we hoisted the spinnaker, we realized our original course was a little bit too much into the wind for our spinnaker. This is why we've wanted a really light wind upwind sail, is we love sailing on days like this when it's just super light wind and you're just ghosting along. So having like a big 155% gennaker code zero, a light wind sail basically cut like an upwind sail made out of a lighter sailcloth. So that we can do this, but going slightly upwind. So now what we're doing is we're just bearing off so that we're going to make a big, well, a big tack really. So we're heading slightly downwind so that we can use our spinnaker and then we're going to turn into the wind. We'll drop our spinnaker and we'll sail with the jib because at that point we'll be making a little more apparent wind. And the jib should be able to carry that. Yeah. So like if the wind shifts a little more to the south or if it picks up and it does have some more south in it, that'll allow us to go a little bit faster. So like now we're doing 3-6 because the wind out of the south will drag the apparent wind behind us while we can speed up a little bit, which then pulls it forward again. So it's like a constant battle trying to keep us at 90 or just aft. We're doing 4 now. Hot rockets. Yeah, Mr. Spinnaker. Ripping. Yeeeew! That right there is how we know we're going fast when the spinnaker is up. A little slappity-slap of the foot of the sail. Quick, Captain. We're running into shore. Well, that worked well. We're doing 6 knots, but yeah, we are running out of room. So time to douse the spin. And then we will hoist... No. We will unfurl. Yeah. You ready? Let's go. Keep the head of the sail and the piece to tie down the tack so that they're easy to find and they don't get lost. All right, ready? How about that? Working with gas. I don't think we'd win any races, but... No. That was a lot of work. It's so funny how much faster it feels going upwind than downwind. We're right on our course? Right on. Right on 325. Nice. That plan worked out so well. Yeah, that was pretty brilliant. As Sailing Nanji would say, life on the lean. Yeeeew! Life on the lean. Look at that action. Yeah, boy. We're not done sailing. It'll just be different.