Sailing again!

After a week of getting the boat put back together, I went out for a sail!  Its been very hot here, and especially since I've been trapped at the marina, since my solar panels are all dead and I like to have the electricity working.  When I arrived back, there was a long list of troubles, and I began to work on them, but it was so hot inside the marina it was hard to make progress.  
A frigatebird had landed (many times) on the mast and pooped all over the mast and the roller furling and broken the wind instruments, so I had to go up the mast quite a few times (5 so far) to clean and put things back together.  My main engine was covered in diesel because a RACOR filter (a water separator filter) had broken (it has a glass bowl under it, that apparently couldn't take the heat), so I had to clean up diesel all over and also get a new filter, which is more difficult than you might think since its mexico.  

The solar panels were all dead, and I needed to find new panels (which I have just done) and now I need to make a beefier rack to hold them up.  (It would be great to be in Bellingham to use Abe's tube bender again...)

The batteries were all very low voltage, so I wasn't sure if they were dead and needed replacing (which I just did in March) again...

And it was hot.  I needed some air.  So I hired a guy to clean the bottom, then went over it again myself, then discovered that there are two crocodiles living in the marina right now...

And took a few friends out.  There have been a few folks here who are very nice and helpful to me while I am working on the boat, so we went for a sail.  We had to test the sails out anyways...

So the winds were light for a while, then we were able to make 5 kts with the winds, then 6, then 7.  And finally the winds came up a bit more and we began to cruise along at 9 and 10, peaking at 11.2  It was a nice day and the boat performed well.  

I learned a lot about one thing during this sail, and that is the weight distribution in the boat.  When heeled over, the boat goes over a lot and sails just fine.  The balance of the rudder (what I mean is how hard you have to pull or push the rudder to keep the boat sailing) is very low, so you can just let go of the tiller and the boat will keep going straight, even up to about 30 degrees of heel.  

But then, at some point, maybe 35 degrees, the lower rudder starts to cavitate, and suddenly the weather helm is very high (the boat wants to turn upwind and you have to fight it) and you lose control of the boat, and she rounds up slowly.  Its a dignified crash, and the sails shake and nothing else really goes wrong, but still, its a loss of control.  

So we were sailing with some power on and a bit of heel, and one of the guys needed to move from his seat on the railing to the center of the boat.  When he did that, the boat immediately heeled more (since he was decently heavy) and then went past the point where you lose control, and we rounded up.  

I'd been talking to a guy in Germany who also has a Pogo 40 and he told me that the best way to sail the boat is to add ballast first, then reef the sails later.  I've been doing the opposite, only adding ballast later on, but this moment made it all very clear to me; I needed more weight on the railing.  So I put in some water ballast and the boat heeled less and immediately sped up.  I didn't put the full tank in, just enough to bring the boat to where it wouldn't round up anymore.  

So I've learned something!  

In a short day race I'll have a bunch of people aboard as rail meat, and not have to use the ballast tanks (which are slow) and I think I'll be much faster now.  

while sailing around by myself I'll just use the tanks, or just go slower.