The rains have gone away - at least for a bit and the weather is beginning to look like Southern California once again. The weather forecast for Saturday 1-22 called for winds from the South at 10 Kts. with partly sunny skies.

We loaded up our gear and towed Slowdance to the ramp at Queens Way, launching around noon. It was near low tide and this ramp gets slippery when the tide is low, one side also had a layer of muddy sand on it about 2 inches deep, making it even more slippery - probably unusable for retrieving a boat.

This was the first sail for a new mainsail from Point sails. This is a full batten sail (dubbed their high performance version) and is made out of slightly heavier material that the standard sail. I'm sorry I don't have any pictures of this sail set - camera battery turned out to be dead this trip - but it sets beautifully. It is much easier to control the shape of the sail, as well, with the outhaul and it can be made much flatter than the original soft sail. It also seems that we were able to point quite a bit higher with the new sail than we could with the older one - this may have partially been due to the age of the older sail.

One caveat that the sailmaker warned us about was that some Potter owners complained difficulty reefing the full batten sail. The sailmaker placed slugs on the sail luff at the end of each batten pocket. Apparently this is necessary to support the battens and makes sense. Although we haven't reefed the sail, yet, it seems like the lower batten will end up right in the mast gate with boom at is normal height. The recommended solution was to install a mast gate. This is not a bad idea anyway, since the usual method of keeping the sail slugs in the track with a lowered sail is to use a slug-stop that fits in the mast groove. The biggest problem with these things is losing them overboard while your trying to drop a couple of sail slugs out of the slot to reef. With the mast gate, everything stays attached to the mast and the sail slugs can remain in the slot with the sail reefed simplifying the process.

As far as I can tell, there isn't a mast gate made for a Potter P19 and, if there was, it probably wouldn't fit anyway since the size and shape of the opening in the mast slot varies from boat to boat - at least in the older ones. Our solution was to find a slightly oversized mast gate and modify it to fit.

This mast gate started out as a rectangular unit for a 4" opening from a company called Rig Right http://www.rigrite.com/ and a link to the page with this mast gate on it is here: http://www.rigrite.com/Spars/Kenyon_Spars/3650-mast.html although this link may change. As you can see, this mast gate is no longer rectangular. The opening on Slowdance's mast is angled, so I cut the mast gate to fit the notch. It also was apperently shaped for a larger mast and was not quite curved enough to fit the mast well, so I reshaped it using a shop press (and partially with a mallet and vise). I also had to drill and tap two holes in the mast for the stainless thumb screws that are supplied with the unit.

This mast gate is opened by loosening the two thumbscrews and sliding it out of the way. You can also see the shape of the opening in the mast here. I'll comment more on this modification later on after we've put a few more miles on it.

The sail from Long Beach went fairly well. We did have one problem as we were passing by the Queen Mary on the way out. Apparently the recent rains have caused a lot of silt and sand to move into the channel and, coupled with the low tide, made for some new (and unmarked) obstacles. As we were passing about 75 yards from the QM, we started dragging our keel on the bottom. I cranked it up about a foot and moved closer to the QM. Hopefully someone will move the "Shoal" markers to match the new bottom profile. Meanwhile, for any one launching at this ramp, you may want to have your depth sounder on, or at least stay a bit closer to the QM.

We cleared the breakwater, marking the center of the channel with a way point just in case the fog got worse, and sailed off on a beam reach. The sailing was great with the boat well powered and comfortable. We sailed out about 4 miles and headed back in on the reverse bearing. We didn't see any whales this trip, either, but it wasn't for lack of looking. We started getting slightly stronger gusts on the way back and partially furled the genoa to about lapper size - Donna really appreciated not having to crawl out on the wet fore deck to change jibs.

The rest of the trip in was uneventful. We did see a couple of ships passing in and out of the harbor (and near us). Most of the boats that were out seemed to be staying inside the breakwater - a pity, really as there was much better wind outside.

It was a nice day. I'm very happy with the new sails and I think Slowdance is, too.

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