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Very Popular BeachLabels: dragon, Mexico, Perula, storm clouds
posted by wingssail at 8:48 AM
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I am a sailor, born of a nautical tradition passed to me by my father and my Grandfather Alfred. I’ve spent most of life on my passion which is the sea and the vessels which go upon them. I have had many such vessels and now I live on and sail on the sloop WINGS. which I acquired in 1986 with my wife Judy who shared my passion. For ten years we lived on Wings in Seattle and sailed, including racing. Then we left the Pacific Northwest and voyaged across the world, across the seven seas, to faraway places, and made them our own. For thirty-eight years I have lived and loved this life. I still live on Wings, in Mexico, and sail and race often. Judy passed away in June, 2023 and I miss her but you can still join us and sail the seas as we did for all those glorious years. Fred Roswold, SV Wings, Mexico
New Panga Docks at Perula
The Malecon is really nice
River entrance, Perula
Panga full going to the Islands
Looks like there is rain over there
Storm Cloud coming
Storm over Perula
Cochinas Islands
Rescue Panga Heads Out
Soaked passengers
Put the chairs away
Setting sail
Self Steering with the Monitor
Judy's awning
I could just reach the water
Then a wave came
Fred Steers
We set the Dragon Spinnaker
It flys
The Dragon
The Ride Home
Back in the slip at La Cruz
3 Comments:
I am so glad there is someone smart and prepared on Wings. Good job Judy!
Pictures are beautiful, I love the dragon.
Your lives are not dull. I’m glad but is that good as you get older? Hugs lil sis
Yes, the more we age the more excitement tends to bring with it some anxiety, but we've always had that. I remember the old days and having butterflies before a race or as a storm approached. So that hasn't changed much. We find great satisfaction when we've pushed ourselves outside the comfort zone and past the anxiety and gotten through it. At the end of the day it feels good to have prevailed and know we can still do it. Too easy to sit back and just get old.
The real aging issue is with our bodies. Less strength, agility, balance and slower physical reaction time makes working fast on a moving boat that much more difficult. I watch younger crew running forward like a cats but I just can't do that anymore. I try but it just doesn't work. I feel so much more tentative on the foredeck than I used to. Even using the dingy or climbing back up on deck from it is harder.
But we are all walking down that path alone towards the same destination. We can watch the younger ones and envy them, but they will be here along with us soon enough. The best we can do is fend it off for a bit.
So we also push ourselves in the gym three days a week and try to delay the inevitable. Helping each other with the tough bits on the boat helps.
We'll do this as long as we can, we think sailing may keep us young and what does not kill us makes us stronger.
Hi Wingsail,
I enjoy your blog, and postings to various sailing forums.
My wife and I are also getting old of course, and I certainly hope this aging process continues for a long time, rather than the eventual alternative. So we have a similar style of boat: and old race boat, and for many of the same reasons you have your old race boat. Hopefully we will meet in Mexico in at year or so.
We were also having difficulty getting into and out of the dinghy. So we added a sugar scoop. You can read about it here: https://forums.sailinganarchy.com/index.php?/topic/228802-sugar-scoop-added-to-olson-40/&tab=comments#comment-7690232
We have done many other things to make the boat easier to sail, and less dangerous as we get older. Chiefly, we have reduced loads, friction, and weight of things.
One thing we did that had an enormous effect was switching to carbon sails, with a fully battened main and non-overlapping jib.
While carbon is more expensive than dacron, we no longer need to reef or change sails as the sails do not get fuller as the wind increases. The only reason to reef is because the sails get too full: windage is actually less on a mast with a sail behind it than a mast without a sail behind it, as long as the sail can be made very flat, which of course is only possible if the cloth does not stretch.
The main has slug slides in a Tides Marine so hoisting is low friction. The sail is so light and the track so low friction I can hoist it by hand to the upper spreaders. The light sail is very easy for me to fold it on the boom by myself. No lazy jacks needed, so all the pain and maintenance related to lazy jacks is entirely eliminated.
The jib is also fully battened, and the lowest batten is perpendicular to the luff. The jib is on soft hanks on a dyneema headstay. This again means light and low friction. The lack of overlap means the sail pretty much never touches the water on a hoist or drop, its very easy to keep it aboard. The lower batten allows us to run DDW without a pole of any kind, which is quite cool. The high clew means we do not have to adjust the jib lead cars. The lack of overlap means the lazy (windward) sheet is used as a barber hauler, so we only use the outboard track and have cleaned up the deck by removing all inboard tracks and barber haulers. Again, the sail is very light, so can be folded in a moment. We have a sail cover for the jib, so it never comes off the headstay.
The sails are made of Dimension Polyant GPX which lasts seemingly forever, at least a couple of decades.
Anyway, I sure hope you can continue to enjoy sailing for as long as possible. These are some things we have done to try and achieve that goal.
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