sailing log: 2022-08-02

Tuesday afternoon’s are never ending?

we vacationed for another family vacation week up at Camp Arcadia and the weather cooperated nicely on Tuesday afternoon – with smaller rolling waves and decent winds to take advantage of out on the waters of Lake Michigan.

after sailing solo for a bit, I swung back towards shore and picked up our youngest son Iggy, but my pics of him were taken through a dry bag for my iPhone and ended up super blurry.

it also was a big day for our 14-yr old son – he took sailing lessons in Opti’s ( more than a couple years ago), but time/circumstance/weather hadn’t ever given him a chance yet to solo sail our Minifish or Sunfish. but this afternoon, he got some last-minute tips from T2 (our oldest), and just jumped right in the Minifish and started sailing.

I tried to stay at least in his general area (me sailing on the Sunfish), but I shouldn’t have worried about it – he did great, didn’t tip over or sail into anything, and got some great solo sailing experience. after a while, I let T2 sail the Sunfish – here he is on the Sunfish w/ Luke on the Minifish.

I’m really pleased with using my Garmin watch to track the sailing activities – just a couple clicks on the watch and it’s ready to track the sailing, and after I upload the activity to Garmin Connect, then I can change the “activity” to “sailing” and it changes to nautical miles and knots.

and here’s a blow-up view of the tracking route

it was a great afternoon on the beautiful waters of Lake Michigan!

sunfish pvc dolly – handle upgrades

I love when I get feedback from fellow Sunfish sailors after they build their own Sunfish PVC dolly, more or less following the Sunfish PVC dolly plans that I posted several years ago. often they mention little tweaks here and there, but now Mark has made some major improvements and we both thought it would be great to share them with the rest of the Sunfish sailing community. here are a few of his modifications:

• modified the handle attachment to use hitch pins to allow the handle to be removable (major upgrade!)
• adjusted the axle design so that instead of a long threaded rod, you can use short bolts instead
• the axle design changes allow you to widen the dolly width (so as to not be limited by the length of threaded rod you can easily source)
• changed to all stainless steel hardware to allow use in saltwater environments
• added bunk supports to keep the dolly bunks from dragging

Mark put together a very thorough blog post that outlines his ideas and directions on how to tweak my dolly plans to incorporate his changes. if you’re interested in his improvements, check out his blog post and his very detailed instructions.

Mark’s handle connection and bunk supports

Mark’s hitch pin handle connection

sailing log: Father’s Day 2021

two years in a row means it is tradition, right? for our 1st sail of the year was Father’s Day, I took all 4 boys down to Ford Lake near Belleville, Michigan. it was a lot of just drifting along, but still a great time with the boys.

my 2nd son chose to fish from the shoreline, but the other 3 boys all joined me out on the water – my oldest son on the Minifish and me on the Sunfish with the 2 youngest sons.

it was a hot and humid day, and sadly very little wind. plenty of jet-ski traffic around us as well.

the lighter winds allowed my youngest son to explore on the Sunfish.

he even pretended to be a pirate and jumped over to board the Minifish and sail with his older brother for a while.

3rd son took the tiller and mainsheet for a while.

all told, a great time. just hope for better winds the next time.

new sailboat: Rocket by Fulcrum Speedworks

there is a new “Sunfish” style sailboat on the market, and it looks pretty sweet — the Rocket by Fulcrum Speedworks, built in Bristol, Rhode Island.

(photo via Fulcrum Speedworks)

the boat hull weight is only 90 pounds, so similar to a Minifish, the smaller and lighter cousin to the Sunfish. there isn’t specifications shown on the Fulcrum Speedworks website, but the sail is the same lateen rig style of the Sunfish and Minifish, and it says it should compete with other 14-foot dinghies (like the Sunfish, the Minifish is a bit shorter). the long open cockpit looks like a great improvement on the Sunfish/Minifish design – a simple change but looks like a much better design.

Each $4600 Rocket is a complete “sailaway package” with
-Fully outfitted hull
-Complete assembled mast and spars
-Sail and all lines and ropes
-daggerboard and rudder
-Launching dolly

my2fish blog’s 9th birthday

9 years.

happy blog birthday to my blog about Sunfish sailing. hard to believe I’m closing in on a decade.

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

sunfish sailing in the rain

it was an interesting afternoon: winds seemed light and shifty at times and the sky out on the horizon looked dark and cloudy. radar showed a big storm coming across Lake Michigan, but it seemed like it might pass up to the north of Camp. my son T2 and I decided to try sailing on our Sunfish and Minifish despite the chance of rain.

as we started rigging our boats the first rain drops started to fall. but I didn’t see anything to dark on the horizon and had not heard any thunder. we figured let’s try it out and see if we could at least get a quick sail.

I sent him off in the Minifish and then raised the sail on my Sunfish. winds were mostly from the south and had picked up some. rain continued to drip down on me, just a nice gentle rain.

as we sailed, the wind and waves both kept increasing as the rainstorm kept coming from the west and across Lake Michigan. I was able to snap a few pics before it got too intense.

T2 sailing behind me, Camp Arcadia on the shoreline of Lake Michigan behind him.

the cool rain was awesome and as the wind and waves kept picking up it just got better. we were both flying across the water, mostly just reaches east and west, as I didn’t want to wander to far north or south up the shoreline with the storm close.

it was an awesome afternoon of sailing!