sunday morning i grabbed the gps and went out to the centre of the lake, where the wind angle is most constant, with the plan of trying to sail as many angles as possible and using the recorded track and "gpsar" to produce a polar graph for my cat showing points of sail and boat speed
but out in the middle the wind was so constant and mild that decided instead to try some trap training the old windsurfer harness

and it wasn't so bad!

bit of a scramble to get out with 1 hand holding the main sheet and rudder and the other hooking on and then holding the T handle, but from there is was simplicity itself. love the new view of the boat it gives, esp. looking down and seeing the moonie eyes i painted on the daggerboard cutting through the green lake water

without any non-slip tape it was a bit slippery out there but soon found that a pretty wide stable stance could be had with the aft foot back against the rear beam and the forward against the side-stay chain plate

spent the rest of the morning on the wire, coming in, going out, moving forward and back etc. then came in for lunch

our lake pretty consistently has it's best winds 1-3pm, so after lunch it was out again to continue the trap training in winds that needed it. one of the advantages of this small lake for a noob is if the winds pick up enough to make a tacking or gibe tricky you can just continue the reach closer to the shore where the wind gets all broken up.

as it was i spend the afternoon happily going out and coming in off the wire, just reaching back and forth across the lake. the extra righting moment settled the 2man boat down beautifully for solo use

with the stronger winds the rigging was just starting to howl at times and the bow of the leeward hull was about halfway down with the windward hull just skipping across the surface but never needed to get all the way back or worry about pitch-poling. some great bursts of spray through the tramp and off the bows, got to get a camera out there!

biggest hassle was what to do with the excess length of main sheet, how to stop it dragging in the water when out on the wire???, ended up spending too much time/attention trying to flick it back onto the tramp...

from out on the wire i couldn't see the gps up on the main beam but at the end of the day was rewarded with a new personal best of 18knots, screen grab attached

things to do; 1)re-angle the cleat on the main sheet block higher. out on the wire you are so flat it can be hard to uncleat, 2)get some non-slip tape on the hulls and deck edge, 3)start thinking about adding old windsurfer foot-straps between the rear beam bolts and rear hull 4)mount both old and new garmins, 1 each side of boom for easier viewing 5) start thinking about adding back straps to the old windsurfer harnesses