Sailing

hanten- Welcome to A2K!

Don't personally know anything about sailing myself, but I will bet that you will find a sailor or two amongst our membership.

Welcome, hanten.

How much sailing experiences do you have until now and on what boats? What about your navigation skills?

Several years back one of my friends bought a cat. None of us had ever sailed before, so we just rigged the thing up, put it the water and found out what we could do. MOst fun I've ever had. I can't help you with navigation, but when it comes to the making it move part, just try things. YOu'll soon work it out.

With a 30' boat, Wilso? Could be quite expensive, if it doesn't work :wink:

And dangerous as well.

Re: Sailing

This is to protect the sensitivities of the numerous Australians on the site.

I love to sail, but don't know much about it. And certainly not much about requirements in US. Do you have a sailing club near you, so you can get some professional advice?

I've never seen sailing discussed here

Do you need a licence?

Reply
We need a license for the boat, but individual captains don't.

It's true that a 30' boat could be an expensive experiment, but we're talking about $3500. It's needs interior work. So actually that boat was less expensive than some of the 21' Catalinas.

From what I've heard, and maybe you all know better, bigger boats are actually pretty easy because they are less volatile. That said, I also imagine the momentum of a bigger boat makes docking harder.

Do any of you have recommendations for sails? I believe the boat comes with three - the main and two jibes.

I have the same question as Walter - do you have any experience at all?

If you have teachers ready and you'll be learning on a lake then you should be ok. I would advise satying away from jibs - you do not know how to sail the boat and making it go faster is going to make you're learning experience harder and more dangerous. Figure out what you are doing first, then look at buying things. In a Hunter you'll average about 4 knots without a jib on a nice day - plenty fast enough to learn. With jib you can go to 8 knots, depending on the lake (not familiar with SC lake winds) - bigger the lake, bigger the wind, etc. I've never sailed a Hunter so I'm not sure what kind of drag she has or what her steering performance is like - all things you'll need to test out before throwing a jib on her.

Also, do you already have a slip for it? Being a keel boat, you really should.

As far as right now - do you know all of the parts of your boat - their names and functions? If you do, great! If not, get you book and go sit on the boat for a couple of hours for a few days. Learn them all and test yourself. There's nothing more dangerous or foolish than a boat owner saying "Hand me that rope over there".

What kind of shape is the boat in? Does it need any fiberglass work? How about the teak? Make sure you maintain every detail - it doesn't take much for a boat to lose it's luster and seaworthiness.

Resist the urge to run her under power. It's a bad habit and should only be used in poor wind conditions and at the dock - more power = less sailing = why own a sailboat.

And if you're concerned about sailors superstitions, just let me know, because there's a ton of them.

Additionally, I could whistle my boatwains pipe and sing some shanties (especially the last wouldn't only banish any sea ghosts but ...!).


hanten

I might be totally wrong, but I get the idea that you really don't have sailed a lot before.

If you don't have sails, you'll need a mainsail and one jib (not jibe). Learn on those first - you may use another in the future, but you'll probably never use or need more than 2 jibs.

Also, do you know you're knots?

hanten
Have you sailed much? Did you inspect the hull? I'm concerned that it's a old boat. 30foot and $3,500 is way to good of a deal on the Hunter is it a swing keel?
Is this what you bought?
http://www.hunter30.com/timewarp.htm

A site for Hunter Sailboat owners


Price Index

More Sailing
Your suspicions are exactly correct. Both of us (my father-in-law and I) have never sailed. Not once. It sounds foolish, but we just decided it was something we wanted to do and could do.

The link to hunter30.com is exactly what the boat looks like.

We did inspect everything and we had a local expert look over everything, too. The fellow who owned it before traded it in when he bought a new boat. Meanwhile, the guys at the marina are not salespeople; the thing has sat in their backyard for five years. Not for any problems, but because they haven't run a single ad and have only showed it to a handful of people.

You're right 3500 is way too cheap. I called the previous owner who was shocked. He said it's worth 8000 - 9000. The marina started at 5,000. We told them we'd pay 3500 and rent a slip from them (1,000 per year). They accepted.

So the whole things is a little unexpected, but in the meantime we're doing all the reading we can.

I do know quite a bit about outboard motors and boats in general. I know knots (ties) and knots (speed), but I have never sailed.

Thanks for the replies.

Close to the boat of a friend over in Idaho at Bayview - Lake Pend Oreille

Little off topic but this is about 10 miles from my house - I gotta go check it out

Hanten - sounds great - but some more formal sailing lessons will help, and supplement the reading.

Then I'll be over for a sail!

Hunter is a nice yacht, decent for racing, which is my territory....

What have you found out so far??