Our New Sail

So we hoisted the new drifter and it is quite something.  We bought it off Craigslist for $400. (Plus it came with 4 bins of miscellaneous junk thrown in that the sellers wife foisted off on us.  I am very excited about all the junk.  Ari and I have a bet about how much I can make selling the junk.  He thinks $75,  I say $100.)  It seems to fit fairly well, which is a bit of a surprise because both my husband and the seller seemed a bit unsure of all the dimensions.  We have not actually used it to sail the boat and there are some concerns that it might not tack well between the jib and jib topsail stays.  But who needs to tack when trying to go upwind in light air?

The whole process of hoisting a sail was a bit more difficult then I would ever have imagined.  Ari has been sick for a few days and keeps getting out of bed acting like he is doing fine.  And then he will say things like "I feel a little woozy."  So when I proposed the sail hoisting project I thought he was feeling better.  Only to discover halfway through that he is still feeling sick and light headed.  So, I feel a little guilty that I let him go out on the bowsprit twice.  Also, when I suggested hoisting the sail the baby was asleep, and she of course woke up as soon as we got the sail on deck.  So I lay her down in the cockpit on a sail bag, and Ari or I would go back and check on her when she started complaining about how boring it was by herself looking at the sky.  In our efforts to hoist the sail, with Ari not thinking clearly because he has hardly eaten in two days and me half thinking about my poor baby in the cockpit, we (I) first hanked the sail on to the wrong stay, and we hoisted it up before we realized what was wrong.  But at last we got it up on the right stay, and it is glorious!

But, does it really matter how many sails your boat has if you are too scared (and messy) to take your baby out sailing and you live on your boat?  Yemaya will be 4 months old this week and she has been sailing three times!  Twice on a 30 ft catamaran and once last night on our Santana 22 just up to Jack London Square and back.  And perhaps soon we can take her out on Macha.  I guess as long as the boat doesn't heal very much I can hold her safely underway.  But when Macha is powered up by the afternoon Bay wind, I am worried my little one and I will not have very much fun sliding around in the boat.  But who knows, perhaps we can just play on the sole and come up when things are calm and we will not be in the way.  And maybe we will figure out the whole car seat lashed down below thing too.  Since she can't really move herself around yet I worry about leaving her in a padded berth where she may get smushed in a corner with out really being able to get herself out on her own.  But soon she will be older and stronger which will help me be braver about the adventures we take her on.