Sailing stories from Seattle

[Andrew Means]

Hey All -

I've just started a blog dedicated to telling the (mostly-true) adventures of our boat, the Wino Country Safari. Hope you guys enjoy them!

http://winocountrysafari.tumblr.com/

 

[Frank Langer]

A fun read so far... enjoy your continued adventures.

Frank

 

[toddbrsd]

Andrew, err, I mean Major,

I hate to read, but you kept me captivated and that sir is a compliment!!

 

[Andrew Means]

haha, thanks! I really want to not only chronicle what happens on the boat for posterity and our own nostalgia, but also tell the stories in a way that makes them a little larger than life - to the point where I want people to read the blog and be inspired to have the kinds of adventures and connectedness that we have when we're out on the boat...

 

[ignacio]

13 people?

Did I read correctly that you had 13 people on your E27 in your Bainbridge attempt? I had an E27 up until a year ago, and the most I ever had on it was 5 adults. I had the model with the open transom and an outboard, so with enough people in the cockpit and just the right wave on the stern, we'd get a little water int the cockpit. I can't imagine what it would have been like with 13, but imagine you distributed your additional ballast around the boat?

Hey All -

I've just started a blog dedicated to telling the (mostly-true) adventures of our boat, the Wino Country Safari. Hope you guys enjoy them!

http://winocountrysafari.tumblr.com/

 

[Andrew Means]

Did I read correctly that you had 13 people on your E27 in your Bainbridge attempt? I had an E27 up until a year ago, and the most I ever had on it was 5 adults. I had the model with the open transom and an outboard, so with enough people in the cockpit and just the right wave on the stern, we'd get a little water int the cockpit. I can't imagine what it would have been like with 13, but imagine you distributed your additional ballast around the boat?

Yeah, it was nuts; way too many people for that kind of weather. We were going to be 8 people but then at the last minute 5 more had been invited by other folks - I figured a chunk of the people would stay down in the cabin, but with the waves (which I obviously exaggerated in the story anyone staying down there started to feel sick pretty quickly. If I had been wiser I would have just said "sorry guys, it's going to be rough out there and we can't have this many on board." We had most people on the rail, which actually helped a lot, and wasn't too bad, but there were a couple times where I needed to bodily move somebody out of the way in order to get to a winch or something. If we had just 8 people on board I think we might have avoided the sheet-to-the-face incident, although with the traveler where it is, anybody sitting near the T is liable to get hit by the sheets; I know it's happened to me multiple times!

One 4th of July we had 22 people on board. We looked like Hatian refugees. We bought a ton of the most basic life jackets you can get so we had one for everyone. It was kind of epic. I was worried that something really interesting would happen on one side of the boat and everybody would run to one side and swamp us : )

 

[Dan Morehouse]

Wow, 22 people. I have a Roberts 22 that I think I've had a max of 13 people aboard. This also on a lake-one that if we sank, you could still stand on the cabin top and keep your feet dry. But what's the most you've ever had sleep aboard?

 

[Andrew Means]

We've only had 5 sleep aboard at most, I think. We only had 22 one time (I just posted a new article about that day on the blog, detailing how we got rammed by a Chris Craft power yacht out on Lake Union on July 4th in 2009), and it wasn't for very long, on a lake, with no wind.