Sunday, February 24, 2008

February 24th - Sooke Basin - (#8)

Gordin and I drove out too Cooper’s cove and joined Gerhardt and some other “SKUNCS” (Rob, Muriel, Felicity) for a nice paddle in the inlet. There was a nice easterly wind to begin with so I put up my small Spiritsail and Gerhardt put up his Windpaddle (photo below). I really like the idea of the windpaddle as it can be easily ported from one boat to another with no deck rigging. Probably not wuite as effective as the spirit sail or the pacific action sail, but good all the same. We stopped by the “Florence Folberg” which was aground and rather wrecked on a sandbar in the basin. After the wreck, Gordin and I paddled on over to his in-law’s for a lunch stop. We had a nice flood to assist us on the way back which more than made up for the wind in our faces.


IMGP1421 IMGP1423 IMGP1425 IMGP1426 Gerhard and his Windpaddle


IMGP1428 IMGP1430 IMGP1432 IMGP1436 the wreck of the Florence Folberg


IMGP1437 a nice boat with a nice view!


I was also testing out my new SPOT satellite tracker. This also worked well. I received a few sample messages such as the one below:



SPOT Check OK. MJ is Fine!

Unit Number: 0-7349589

Latitude: 48.3939

Longitude: -123.6547

Nearest Town from unit Location: Unknown

Distance to the nearest town: Unknown

Time in GMT the message was sent: 02/24/2008 18:02:34

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=48.3939,-123.6547&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1



I also have a google earth file of the record made by the SPOT tracker. http://www.islandnet.com/~mjackson/spot_messages_sooke.kmz ScreenShot028



One test message took 1.5 mins from me pressing the button to receiving the text message on my cell phone.

You can see the device “in hand” at http://flickr.com/photos/chaffneue/2287365121/in/set-72157603971935680/ on Rich’s web site


15.5 km, 8 NM, YTD 133 km.ScreenShot029

1 comment:

Adam Bolonsky Dot Com said...

HI Mike,
thanks for the trip report.

I noticed Gerhard was using a WindPaddle. I also recently used and tested one. Do you know if he encountered the same steep learning curve I did on how to coil the sail and put it back into its bag?

Adam