Since it was blowing good and cold as hell, I decided to see how Beto would do on just the mainsail. She did great! We could head upwind around 50 degrees apparent at around 5 knots. In gusts I just headed up a tad and she took it seemingly unimpressed. Falling off to a reach, we hit 10 knots during the puffs. Sweet! Most surprising, however, was that we were able to tack no problem on just the main in pretty decent wind. I found that coming about quickly on the tiller allowed her to swing through. Once head to wind, I unsheeted the main and then sheeted back in, slowly heading back up onto the new tack. We only had to backwind the main and reverse the rudders once in two and a half hours of beating up the river channel. My big Nalgene bottle also stood straight up for the entire trip. Who needs monohulls?! Anyways this experiment was a good confidence booster that Beto can be safely and calmly sailed in higher winds on just the main alone.
I got an old cheap nylon drifter/reacher for Beto. It was too long on the leech, so I cut it down today and just need to sew in some tape along the new foot and a new clew patch. I also found some rot in the forward beam where the anchor chain has rubbed it. It's not too bad luckily, but this wet winter has definitely done some harm. I scraped all of the rot out and will let it all dry up fully before re-epoxying on Friday. I also found a massive genoa of 4 oz dacron that I'm contemplating pulling the plug on for go fast activities in the future. Due to the rot, I am not going to get serious about making a chain/anchor roller for the front beam so I don't have to deal with anymore rot like this. The beams take a lot of abuse on these Tikis.
Rot 1
Rot 2
Recutting
Fits Much Better!
Downwind Run
