Monte Copeland built a 17′ sailboat called a Catboat. Which is way cool, in my opinion. He detailed a lot of the process here. I finally got a chance to sail it today. It was a beautiful out. Not a cloud in the sky. Temperature in the 80s. Light winds out of the North. Very few motorized boats out.

We drove out 360, to 2222, to 620, to the marina here. Surprisingly, for being built on the water, there were an awful lot of spiders on the marina and the boats.

After we motored out of the marina, we pulled out the sail and took off. Monte started off but quickly handed the reins over to me. The boat is extremely responsive and pretty vocal in response to what you do. If you pull harder on the rope that brings the sail towards the center of the ship, the speed starts increasing. And the tension on that line really increases making it harder to pull it in more. There was probably 50 or more pounds of force on that line. As the sailboat speeds up, it leans in the water. You want the slope of the hull to run flat over the water. And the position of the other person really does makes a difference in the angle of the ship.

If you want to slow down, you just let out the rope. And you can even let go of the rope entirely if you want. As you turn the ship, you can tell what angle works best against the wind. If you turn too much into the wind, the sail starts to flutter as it looses the wind.

We sailed down wind for a while which is pretty easy. Then, we turned back to practice tacking upwind which is much harder. Or, shall I say, much slower. The winds were mostly consistent. There were some moments of no wind. But it is surprising just how little wind you need to go. Of course, that other boat out there was bigger than us and had two sails. So it was much faster and more efficient than us in the wind department. And it was interesting how the winds changed when we got close to the shoreline.

This boat also has a low draft. Like less than 3 feet of water. So, we are able to get quite close to the shore as we make the bend along the lake. Certainly inside of the warning buoys.