Found her!

-
It is unlikely that you would find a rare high performance French sailboat on a lake in Arkansas, but I did. And she waited patiently for a year for us to buy her. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Blue J (RYA GBR-5443T) came to the USA with her original owner, who bought her in the UK in 1996. He sailed her on the Solent for several years, once taking a very impressive 24th (corrected time) in the Around The Island race at Cowes. Upon coming back to the states,  he had a custom trailer made and brought her with him, and sailed her in Boston.

But he longed for one-design sailing, so he sold her to a man in Louisiana who never sailed her and kept her on a lake in the Ozark Mountains. I found her, advertised in the Little Rock craigslist pages. But then some things came up, and I had a different focus. So into the back of my mind went BlueJ, put aside but not forgotten. A year later, when I figured that a bigger boat than my First 235 Jackdaw might be great on Minnetonka at Wayzata yacht Club, on a lark I emailed the owner to see if she was still available. Several phone calls later, I was on my way to Lake Degray. This was my first sight of her, and the beginning of our adventures together.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Getting an International Certificate of Competence (ICC) in the USA

-
Image
If you are an American sailor with international sailing aspirations, you have probably heard of the ICC. Sometimes described incorrectly as an 'International Sailing Licence' or 'Global Charter Certification', its roots and purpose are more complex, and somewhat strange to Americans. I'll start with a little background. More ancient than automobile driving, mariners (in particular recreational mariners) have long enjoyed a tradition of loose or non-existent licencing of their activities world-wide. Even in well developed countries like the USA, there is very little in the way of formal requirements in order to operate a boat. This has led the world to view American charter skippers as 'Credit Card Sailors', due to the only thing needed with their name on it to sail is their credit card! As often happens in matters like this, the ICC got its start in Europe. The close proximity of countries and the mixing of languages, laws, and cultures made a mis
Read more

LED Nav/anchor replacement bulb

-
Image
Depending on the build year and the market, the First 260 often came with a single light at the mast top, most typically a red/green/white navigation light. Designed for offshore/coastal use, the fixture placed the light source high where it was easily seen. The single light has its disadvantage however, the primary one being that there is no provision for an anchor light. You CAN replace the fixture to a stacked nav/anchor light, but beyond that being expensive, you still need to run another set of 12v wires to the top of the mast, and add a switch to your DC panel to control it. So most boats stayed rigged in the original manner. A later option was a LED replacement fixture from NASA Marine in the UK. Called the Combi-LED, this light had the innovative ability to be controlled by ONE 12V wire pair, meaning no new wires to be pulled. It did this by reversing polarity to get anchor light, and came with a small switch to add to your panel to control this. I looked at doing this for
Read more

Spinnaker Handling: Twings

-
Image
A recent addition to modern spinnaker handling are a set of control lines called 'twings'. Twings are used to control the position of the spinnaker sheet and guy to shape the sail, and although they are not standard rigging from Beneteau, they are easy to rig on a First 260 or First 25s.   In the picture, you can see both the sheet and guy. Although hidden on the port (guy) side, you can see the twing attached to the sheet of starboard, holding it slightly down to give a better lead angle to the clew. This gives better sail shape. On the pole side, the twing helps the pole-down line control pole position. This diagram gives a good feel for how the lines are laid out. Ideally, you can control the twing from the cockpit as shown. Looking back at the first picture, the control device (F) is a Harken 150 camcleat with a Extreme Angle fairlead on it, mounted on the outer side of the coaming. You can see it easily in the picture. Here it is easily accessible by crew, and
Read more