Bottleport Patent Pending Hydration Solution for Small Sailboats and Other Watercraft 75th Sail

My Bottleport Patent Pending Hydration Solution for Small Sailboats and Other Watercraft 75th sail of the year was... was...

Hmmm. How was my 75th sail? It was a week ago. You see, not only am I falling behind the pace to achieve my target of 100 Laser sailing days in 2008, I am also leaving it so long to write a post about each of my Laser sailing days that I am forgetting what happened.

Geeze. Let's see...

Oh yes. It was out of Weaver's Cove in Portsmouth in a 10-15 knot southerly. A bit like the conditions for my Sunshine Desserts 72nd Sail except it was on the Eastern Passage of Narragansett Bay not the Sakonnet River, and without the dessert. And this part of the bay has steep chop instead of those juicy rolling waves you get on the Sakonnet in a southerly. But apart from being in a different place in different conditions it was identical.

It's getting less busy on the bay on weekday afternoons these days. There was only one other trailer in the boat park when I arrived and a couple of guys unlaunching (is that a word?) a motor boat at the ramp after a fishing expedition. As I rigged, they tried to make conversation with me with comments like...

"If you had a third wheel on that dolly you could sail around the parking lot,"

and

"How fast does that thing go?"

I dunno. How fast does a Laser go? I don't have a speedo on it, so I have no idea.

"Oh, not fast really," I replied looking at the 200hp outboard on the back of their boat and calibrating what their idea of "fast" was.

"10-15 knots?" one of them asked.

"Maybe, on a reach, when it's planing," I said, having no idea whether that was true or not, but it seemed to satisfy them.

So I went for a blast and enjoyed playing in the Narragansett Bay chop on a sunny afternoon. The tide was low and I could see that the shoal to the south of Dyer island extended a lot further than I had realized before. Hmmm. Last time I was here I probably sailed right across those rocks. Lucky I didn't break my centerboard. I suppose I should look at a chart occasionally before sailing in a new area. Oh well, I will know next time.

So I did the usual circumnavigation of the island and back in time for tea. Finished off with a screaming starboard tack reach from the southern tip of Prudence Island back to Weaver's Cove.

15 knots on a reach? I have no idea. Maybe I'll have to buy one of those nifty Velocitek GPS speedo thingies that the Moth sailors use, then I could write about my scary-fast Lasering speed here. "Actually broke the 4 knot barrier on a beat today" and stuff like that.

Or maybe, with the weather rapidly getting colder I should get a thermometer and record the water temperature on each sail and blog about that?

Is this of any interest whatsoever or should I write about Joe the Plumber instead?

Anyway, thanks to my sponsor Bottleport Patent Pending Hydration Solution for Small Sailboats and Other Watercraft. Without sponsors I would just be some old geezer with a beat-up old Laser and a boring blog.