my2fish blog’s 8th birthday

holy schnikes, 8 years? do blog years follow the ratio of dog-to-human years?

that would mean the blog is 56 years old.

that’s starting to feel like forever… no offense to my older blog readers, of course.

speaking of forever, that’s about how long it feels since I’ve been sailing.

building a new house, getting settled in it, raising four boys… stuff just keeps getting in the way of taking a day or afternoon off to find a nearby lake for a quick sail.

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anyway, thanks again to all of you who follow along and pretend to read my posts, and extra special thanks to those of you brave enough to make a comment or two.

I’ve had fun blogging, sailing, and blogging about sailing, and hope to keep doing it for the near future!

cheers,

my2fish

locating the Sunfish logo

a blog reader reached out to me recently to ask how to locate the Sunfish logo on the sail if you had bought a non-class legal sail that didn’t come with a logo (from Intensity Sails or APS for example). I previously blogged about making your own Sunfish logo using insignia cloth.

the Sunfish class provides a sail diagram to show where sail numbers (and country letters) should be placed, but no dimensions are shown.

I got out some really old Sunfish sails, that would have been original manufacturer supplied sails, to measure a few different locations to see if there was consistency over the years with the “official” or class-legal sails.

I also measured my APS racing cut “practice” sail that I made a logo for to see how it compared (bottom right in the photo above, larger photo below).

it seems that the basic summary is that the Sunfish logo usually is placed in the 2nd panel from the top of the sail, about 48″ or so from the top of the sail, but you can probably use your best judgement as you place it. the nose of the Sunfish logo was typically about 16″ from the front of the sail.

 

old style Sunfish rudder repair [video]

Shoreline Sailboats just posted a great video showing some of the steps and process of converting an older style Sunfish rudder to the current rudder system.

Small Boat Restoration also has a good blog post “sunfish rudder conversion” about this same upgrade, with a lot of photos of the process as well.

old style rudder (photo by Small Boat Restoration)

new style rudder (photo by Small Boat Restoration)

all 1972 and newer Sunfish are equipped with the current “new” style of rudder, so this only applies to those of you who have currently, or are looking to buy, an older Sunfish.  back then, the manufacturer of the Sunfish was AMF, and they released a write-up with the procedure to upgrade the rudder.

sunfish sailing terror [video]

this video was posted a few days ago on the Sunfish Forum (link).  it is a little long at 21+ minutes, but it is interesting for a few reasons:

• for those wind and wave conditions, it sure seems like he started with the sail set too high – lowering the sail rig would’ve helped with the overturning moment he would see and have to counteract with his body weight, position, and healthy dose of hiking out.
• he has multiple capsizes, with the Sunfish going full “turtle” and flipping upside down.
• he has a rigging failure out on the water, with the halyard attachment to the upper boom coming loose, I think during the first capsize.  it seems as if the upper end of the halyard has maybe a snap shackle attached to it (about 6:30 in the video) and he uses a strange knot setup to re-attach the halyard.  typically, the halyard is attached to the upper mast with a clove hitch.
• he has a lot of trouble raising the sail back up – this is certainly not an easy task out on wavy water, but it appears his halyard was twisted around the mast, and that certainly wouldn’t help at all. instead of pulling towards himself, he would have had better luck holding the sail with his left hand and pulling down on the halyard alongside the mast.
• he has an older swivel cam cleat at the cockpit lip (I think he hooks the tail end of the halyard into it?) but also a mainsheet block there as well. it might be simplest to remove whichever isn’t getting use to help with confusion while sailing.
• he could probably use a good Sunfish rigging guide to familiarize himself with the key knots to use and the optimal setup for his mainsheet and halyard.
• he has a green “lifeline” that he attaches to himself and the boat – while this is probably not a bad idea, I felt like there was just a tangled mess of lines each time he capsized.
• overall, he did keep pretty good spirits despite each setback, and found a way to limp back to shore and safety – probably with a newfound realization of his level of sailing skill and what he needs to learn from and improve upon.
• it’s never easy to admit failure, so kudos to him for sharing it – hopefully he and now the video viewers can learn from it.

full warning: this was filmed live during the event and he certainly uses some rough language, quite understandable in the situation, but watch your volume if you’re around young children when watching.

any other thoughts and comments?

are you bored?

london calling

Waterloo Bridge, London, 1900 – Claude Monet