Chinook 34 Sailboat – Cinnamon

WOW!!! Finally some spring like weather for the first weekend in April. Four days in a row. Quite a welcome change after the first 3 months of the year averaging out to a record low temperature for the period.

Saturday was warm and sunny, but no wind to speak of so I spent the day washing Cinnamon and enjoying soaking up the sun.

Sunday we had a light East wind, but enough to sail. I went out with my friend Ralph on his Catalina 27 sailboat. Ralph is an old timer on the river and the leisurely pace tacking back and forth across the river gave him a chance to fill me in on the history of the area where we were sailing. On the Vancouver Washington side of the river where there are now fancy condos and upscale restaurants at one time was the outfitting docks for the Kaiser Shipyards. A little farther up the river where Christensen Shipyards Ltd. now builds some of the most beautiful cruising yachts in the world was the heart of the Kaiser Shipyards. During World War II Kaiser built the Liberty ships that supplied the troops all over the world. There are still remains along the river bank of the concrete dry docks where the ships were built. The wind started dying and we had just enough to make it back into Hayden Bay in time to meet Beth when she got off work and Dana Sewall at the dock for a 5 o’clock gin and tonic.

Monday was the warmest day of the year so far with the temperature reaching 78 degrees and Northwest wind 10 to 15 knots. Beth met me at the boat after work and we got out for one of the best sails of the season so far Monday evening. The wind direction allowed for making a broad reach upriver and turning close hauled, hard on the wind back for a single tack both ways. On the way back we were getting a few gusts up around 17 to 20 knots and dunking the rail. What fun! We probably would have been a little faster if we had reefed the mainsail and kept the boat flatter, but sometimes it’s fun to be a little overpowered and hot rod a bit. We got back to the dock in time to enjoy a beautiful sunset. Since Beth could take Tuesday off we decided to stay at the boat.

Tuesday morning was sunny and warm with the wind from the West at about 8 to 10 knots. We got out early at the same time with some friends across the way from us in their Coronado 27 sailboat Pandamonium. We got a nice wing-on-wing run going upriver. Dan Dunn, the Captain of Pandamonium, was nice enough to send me a few shots he took to add to the pictures I got. Dan is quite a good photographer and has an extensive online album of sailing pictures on the Columbia at http://www.pbase.com/dan_123/sailing.