Mom and Dad

We had both of my parents out on the boat this weekend for a short sail.  The wind was nice and they got to feel the boat really move along in the breeze.

And video to prove it:

With 4 adults and 2 kids on the boat, the Pathfinder behaves pretty much the same as when I'm sailing alone.  Probably a little more stable with all the people aboard, but it is really hard to tell much difference.  I had one reef in the mainsail and we moved along at 4 to 6 mph in 10-15 mph winds.  I have found that I like to reef the main starting in that area (10-15), since the boat still gets up to hull speed pretty easily like that.  My feeling is the full mainsail is good for light winds, I reef somewhere above 10, add a 2nd reef above 15, and take the mainsail down altogether at around 20mph.  The only thing I notice is that without the mainsail, the boat won't point quite a well into the wind.

Canyon Lake is variable level, so as Texas dries up, new little islands appear.  We stopped on this one for the first time....the beach is a little rough and rocky.

And another little video of getting back to the dock:

Summer Sail

It was a hot day on canyon lake.  Very nice wind, though shifting directions quite often.  Our boat has sailed more than 100 miles so far and I haven't found any major problems.  A couple of adjustments here and there are always necessary of course.  

We sailed to a different island today, much larger and a little more difficult to find the beach for landing.  It was nice to go for a swim to cool down.

We sailed 10.5 miles today.  With the consistent wind, we had an average speed of 4.2 mph, apparently hitting 8mph at some point.  That's probably a wild data point, but I did see us moving well above 6 and sometimes above 7mph on a reach, indicating the boat was planing a little bit.