She’s half mine, if the ladyfriend gets her due. Sweet, both of 'em. Besides not drawing too much, being stiff in a breeze and reliable when ya need 'em.
20’ seas, while on a boat…well, to paraphrase, ‘adventure’ is what happens when ya screw up big. A good time is… very different. A cruise with good fish, good rum and the like, sounds mighty good to me.
While ‘adventure’ is what happens when things go wrong…well, so is seamanship. I don’t trust GPS, or loran, or anythig beyond dead reckoning, but having all of them plus sun sights available, that makes me more comfortable. Call me a wuss, call me cautious, call me Ishmael… but the main thing about goig to sea is coming back, y’know?
Yeah, when I raced back home on the gulf, we would hit the passes in our lasers when the surf was blown out… Surfing actual breaking waves can get a bit expensive though, I had a friend who broke a mast and ripped a sail in half (about 1 grand total damage) after going over the falls and rolling the boat about 3 times before it lost the wave in about 5 feet of water. as far as lasers go, the lack of a hard chine or rail makes control a lot different than a board if you are trying to go down the line,maybe a hard-chined boat would be a little better suited for it. Regardless its a whole lot of fun to be reaching along at planing speed and drop in on a chest high wave, the acceleration is great.
Last august i put a 21 ft. core-cell foam racing hull into the water for the first time that i’d made… had a blast making it … hull is one quarter inch foam with 2-6oz. cloth on the outside, one 7oz. on the inside… carbon fibers running alont the stress points… and a nitex “cup” inside tying the keel trunk to the mast bulkheads and chain plates…i put a 6 ft. deep high aspect keel in it with a 250 lb let bulb on the bottom… i need to put some stringers into it because in waves the keel trunk flexes backwards and forwards making the whole floor bend…i started sailing in 2000 because i came back to the north shore of oahu after living on the big island for 14 years wanting to surf pipe again… scared myself… i still knew where to line up, but my body couldn’t keep up with my mind… now i only go out under 6 feet, and it has to be a decreasing swell…anyway, we race the little boat every wed. at keehi lagoon now… it’s really fun to sail, very responsive… it took about 6 months of spare time to make the thing… someone gave me a cal 20 rig and sails to put on it, wish it had a larger capacity for sail area…i’ll try and get my friend Bill to post a picture of the boat…danny i really don’t think it would handle surfing waves though it’s so flat…
