Chinook 34 Sailboat – Cinnamon

We finally got out at the same time with Dana Sewall in his Cape Dory 30 for a nice sail. When we first got out the wind was light. Dana put out a whisker pole and went wing on wing upriver. There wasn’t enough wind to hold the wing on wing without a pole so that left us coming up in the wind and gybing back and forth across river, watching Dana pull away from us. As we went upriver the wind started picking up and coming more out of the north so we had a nice beam reach going and were keeping up more with Dana, but he was way up in front. The one thing you think about going upriver is that if you are moving fast against the current and making good VMG that means the wind is coming up. At that point the wind gauge was reading 14 knots.

Dana rounded buoy 18 near the I-205 bridge and started back towards us. He started sailing all crazy. Heeling to the extreme. Later we learned that he had a novice crew and was letting them practice on the helm.

(Click on any small image to see a larger picture.)

We put in a reef. We kept going upriver watching him come towards us. As he got closer we decided to turn and sail back with him so we could get some pictures of the Cape Dory sailing upwind.