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LOG ENTRY DATE: June 2, 2007 Its been over 7 months since Parallax sailed the Chesapeake waters, but as we made the final turn over the Hampton Bridge Tunnel and into Hampton Roads Va it was if we had only been gone for a weekend excursion. The racing set were out in numbers, their spinnakers painting the horizon, you could almost hear the commotion as they jostled for position at the leeward mark I followed the racers into Hampton Roads and as I made the cut into Merrimac Shores Marina there was my good friend and marina owner Bob Nunn “waiting for the tide” in a more or less fixed position to get his deep keeled race boat into the marina. I too waited out the tide in a somewhat less fixed position and after an hour or so we all sailed into the marina. It was good to be back. The trip from Savanna had been fairly uneventful, there was a tropical storm coming up the coast but we had a good head start and we took the best angle to get to the stream and then rode the sleigh all the way to Cape Hatteras. Easy sailing. Beat the storm by a day and got back in town in time to catch my son's band in Va Beach. My good friend Bill Bloodgood and his wife were waiting with a bottle of champagne to go along with the bottle presented me by the Caribbean 1500 rally when we finished the first leg. Bill had left the boat to catch a flight and missed the celebration so I saved the champagne for 7 months for this occasion. I had been unable to find a welder in Hilton Head that could fix the compression post so I wrapped the thing in _ inch biaxial glass and epoxy . Parallax made the trip fine wearing this big ungainly splint; it was most likely the strongest part of the assembly. We will study the loads that are causing the problem and probably fabricate a new post when the season is over. Someone said that cruising is the art of fixing your boat while visting exotic places and there is some truth to that, but we managed to fix and improve a little faster than things broke so Parallax sets in the marina 8 months later in as good a shape as when she left. I will probably post one more entry on “what worked and what didn't work” for those interested in the more technical aspects of single-handed cruising. This is the last “log” entry however, and I would be remiss without extending my thanks to Nathan Sanborn who runs Brushfire Media and who maintained this web site. I had toyed with the idea of maintaining the website myself as well as preparing the content. I'm glad I didn't, it would have been one more thing to learn and maintain and a single-handed sailor is definitely not in short supply of such “opportunities”. This was one I am glad I passed up. You can reach Nathan at, nathan@brushfiremedia.com , definitely one of the things that worked. Also thanks to my son Drew “ Drewps” . He kept up with the mail, picked up the bills and loose ends that I left undone and then visited me for two, what I hope, were very good weeks. Certainly the old man thinks so. I purposefully didn't provide a contact e-mail on the site but if anyone has any questions or suggestion or is just interested my e-mail address is P.Gillihan@att.net. Good Sailing. |
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