New sail!

Finally, my new mainsail for the Oday 19 came in. A neighbor happened to stop in at the same time. Together we down to the lake and set up the boat.

The new sail is a bit different than the old. One of the big differences is that this one is loose footed. It's not attached the whole length of the boom -just at the far end. That's the new trend in sails. It's supposed to give the sail better shape. Whatever. The good news is that it fits well. We took it out for a little spin around the lake.

The only problem now is that the jib sail looks shabby by comparison. No matter. It still works just fine.

While in town a couple days ago I bought a spare mounted tire for the sailboat trailer. Right now it's a spare. In a month or two I'm going to buy a another one and mount the new ones as a set. That will give me two older tires for spares.

The boat is pretty well set up for lake sailing right now. The electric trolling motor is used so little that a 30 watt solar panel has no difficulty keeping the battery charged. Sure beats messing around with gas cans and spark plugs.

I've come up with a design where I can drop in a lazerette box with two additional deep cycle batteries and a charge controller. Another 100 watt panel will sit right on top of the box. That should give me all the power I'll need for longer trips.

Of course, it is a sailboat so I hope to hardly use the motor.

-Sixbears