Sailing Sage, finally!
Preparation for the crossing continues, and one of the MAIN things we needed to do was to sail the boat, so we took her out of the marina for only the second time to shakedown the boat and get the cobwebs off the crew. For Ed, Emmy, and Mark this was the first time they had been sailing on Sage. For me it was only the second, and the first time at the helm.
We had the help of Balance’s QA Manager Mark Wehrley, who has sailed many Balance Catamarans.. Motors were working fine once we got the pilot (me) sorted out. I guided her out under the Bascule bridge and the swing bridge. I admit I was a little nervous. Having the first thing I do on my new boat being hitting a drawbridge seemed like a bad idea, so I was cautious and slowly motored out. Success! We were in the outer harbor bound for Table Bay!
Sage Motoring away from the North Wharf toward the bascule bridge.
Happy captain clears the bascule bridge.
As it often is in Table Bay, the wind was variable, 10-25 knots from all over the place. Table Mountain and the surrounding passes and peaks create a very interesting wind environment. Our goal for the day was to put up and take down all of the sails- Main, Jib, Screacher, #1 Spinnaker and #2 Spinnaker. In that sense the mission was accomplished and we learned a lot.
Mark Chaffee and Table Mountain from the helm.
#1 Spinnaker features the Sage Logo.
We also discovered a few issues. The rudder cables are spectra line, which in theory should be fine, but they are new and they still have some stretch to them and jumped their sheaves, so we lost steering and had to come in under engines with the rudders trailing uselessly. Good thing it’s a catamaran and has two engines to allow steering under power with no rudders.
Overall we achieved the intended result of a first shakedown cruise: Break the boat in non fatal ways and expose weaknesses that can be addressed before we head offshore. I think we will try to do one more before we go. We are targeting Wednesday the 7th as departure day, but the weather also looks good on Thursday. Of course it’s too early to tell, because Cape Town is well known for being un predictable.
The tracker is live at https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/SV-Sage/ where you can follow along as we sail. I won’t be able to update this blog when we are out at sea, but there will be daily updates there. I’ll try to post one more time before we go… but we are very busy getting tools and such together.