The Great Wander

When we set out on this adventure, my grandmother warned us that my grandfather was always out there working on his sailboat.  Everything is always breaking she said.  He was always buying parts for it and going out to the dock to fix it.  She’s not the only one to have said that.  I’m pretty sure that every YouTuber we’ve watched, Nick and Megan, our consultants warned us of this, even a few friends who just sailed once in a while probably said it too.  

Over the last eight months, we have fixed electrical, engine issues, bulkheads, electronics…most every system on the boat.  Except the sailing system.  We didn’t know if anything was broken there or not.  We’d never tried anything in that system, because we hadn’t been able to move the boat!

After the engines were reconnected, after the electronics were mostly hooked up (still a few missing components) we were able to get off the dock.  

We headed downriver about a mile, turned the boat into the wind and raised the mainsail.  Everything went up nice and smooth.  It was a great sight to see!  A couple of minutes later, we grabbed a jib sheet and unfurled the jib!  Then we were off.  We didn’t really go anywhere, we just spent the afternoon tacking back and forth across the river. 

It was supposed to be a light wind day, but as we got out there, the wind picked up, at one point to about 25 knots (29 mph), a bit more than we were expecting, but it sure made One Life fly across the river.  It really was amazing, seeing the sails puffed out, no engines running, it was great. 

We knew the basics of what we were doing.  When I felt like we were going a little too fast, we pulled in the jib a bit and we slowed down some (I had been glancing back at the sugar scoops and it looked like we were heeling more than we should have, but then again, I guess I don’t know how much is too much.  In any case we didn’t capsize!)

Even Rico was enjoying the day.  He sat in the salon and relaxed as we cruised across the river, at one point he even wandered out to the bow to check things out.

After a few hours of this, the wind was really picking up, which can make docking tricky, so we dropped the sails and headed in.  Remember, we’ve never had the sails up, so we don’t know what’s working and what needs to be fixed.

As we head toward the dock, one of the three of looks up and sees a piece of the rigging swinging freely in the wind.  From down below we couldn’t really tell what had happened, but we knew what we were seeing shouldn’t have happened.  

So the next calm day, I sent Matthew up the mast, thankfully only about halfway, and he discovered that the aluminum pole called a jumper strut had sheared at the end cap.  

One more piece to replace!  I made a few calls to the mast manufacturer and pretty soon we had a new piece on the way.   After a few setbacks, we’ve gotten the piece replaced and we can now take her back out again.  Be sure to follow us Instagram (@the.greatwander), TikTok (@thegreatwander), and Facebook…you are likely to see some more video of us sailing once again! And again, if you are enjoying the blog posts, be sure to share them, it really helps!