sailing is an addiction

how to find the truth

found via @sailorgirlhq

1970’s Sunfish sailing comic

I found this great sailing comic posted on Shoreline Sailboats’ Instagram account:

1971-1973 AMF Alcort Sunfish comic book was a 12 page comic highlighting the AMF line of sailboats along with sailing pointers and selling points.

tall ships and lasers

an amazing photo from a couple weeks ago of Lasers sailing alongside a Tall Ship in The Hague Harbour and Beach.

Photo by Karin Ziemer te Riele

found this over at the Laser Forum.

[sail]boat buying flowchart

super porpoise standing on it’s tail

can you teach an old fish new tricks?

this is the most action my old Super Porpoise has seen in a long time.

while we were living in Indiana, I used to store it by hanging it from the garage ceiling (above the garage door space).

but when we moved from Indiana back to Michigan, I had to hang it on it’s side against the garage wall as the ceiling height was too low, and I hadn’t moved it since. then I bought an old Sunfish with a trailer off of ebay, and a couple years later, added a 2000 Sunfish and an older Minifish (for the boys, of course) to my fleet.

since we have built a new house and moved out of the old one, we had to move the Super Porpoise as well, and I needed to get it temporarily out of the way, at least for the short term until I figure out a better long term storage solution until I can either fix up the blemishes or just sell the old girl.

I’ve seen pictures of all the pretty new and shiny Sunfish sailboats standing vertically at the Laser Performance factory in Rhode Island, so figured it was at least worth trying. here’s one of the 60th anniversary Sunfish all pretty and in nice vertical rows.

seems simple, right?

hardly.  despite setting up a cheap block and tackle up in the rafters, there wasn’t really a good way to get the Super Porpoise tipped up vertically.  I had my 15-yr old son helping to muscle it around as best we could, but if you can believe it, my barn isn’t quite big enough (yeah, try telling my wife that…).  at least not big enough to stand up the Super Porpoise or Sunfish sailboats easily. after using the full extent of the block and tackle, we had to muscle it around by hand, and the nose kept hitting the sloping underside of the roof plywood, the boat would tip back and forth smacking into the trusses.  through some miracle of sweat, possibly tears (my son’s, obviously), and shear dumb luck – we did get it to stand up vertically.  we slipped a couple 2×4’s underneath to support it, and walked away.

I don’t know how I’m gonna get that thing down…