Thursday, September 25, 2008 | Author: Jacob
Well, we've been busy making things official (marriage and cruising). In the last several weeks we've both given notice at work, and Julia's last day is 1 week from today. In fact, both of our jobs were very supportive and offered 6 month leaves of absence. It works out very well given the timing of the Mexico cruising season, if we get down there and have had enough, we'll have great jobs to come back to.

It's been interesting now that we are in a position to speak more openly with our friends at work about our plans. Most people are supportive, but there's usually an element of hesitation, or a feeling that they are holding back from saying what's really going on in their head. Often I get the feeling that it would be much easier for people to fit our trip into their cognitive framework if we had some goal. If we were doing a long-distance ocean race, people would get it immediately. We could probably even be tracing the route of some obscure lumber schooner and people would still accept it more readily than just going cruising.
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2 comments:

On September 27, 2008 at 5:01 PM , Canuck Sailor said...

Hey,

This is a great site! My girlfriend and I are looking at taking a year or two sabattical (leaving May 2010) and are in the process of budgetting and selecting our boat. Curiously enough we are looking at a Jason 35. I'm wondering how you have found the weather helm issue on your boat?

 
On September 29, 2008 at 3:03 PM , Jacob said...

Hi there!

Thanks for your comment, we're glad you enjoyed the blog.

The weather helm issue is funny. We talked about it this weekend while we were cranking along at 6.5kt under spinnaker, and here's what we concluded:

Pisces doesn't really have weather helm any more than the next boat. She certainly can get quite heavy on the helm, especially at the higher end of her speed range, but it's not really a true imbalance that would be typical of weather helm.

Now note that unlike some Jason 35's Pisces has a short (~3 foot) bowsprit, so that moves the center of effort forward a bit. But, at the same time, she has a fairly short tiller <5 feet, which for such a big boat is quite small, a wheel would give much more mechanical advantage.

Our last boat was a Cal 29'. A great boat, 8000lb fin keel, spade rudder. That boat was much more forgiving in some ways than Pisces; you could always impose your will on it, no matter how poorly balanced or trimmed it was. It might not be comfortable, but you could do that if you wanted. Pisces is a bit less forgiving, in that if you have the wrong sail up for the wind, you need to change it, you can keep her on track, but you definitely are not going to want to keep sailing like that for long.

Really, our feeling at this point is that it is just part & parcel with a 35' 9 ton boat that has a huge barn door style rudder. It can be heavy on the helm if you have the wrong sail combo up. We have been happily finding recently that we can easily throttle the boat back a bit (versatile cutter rig), and while we might lose 1/2kt or a knot of speed, the comfort gain is huge and the boat is just all around happier.

Hope this helps, feel free to contact us if you have other questions as you move forward in your search!

Best,
Jacob