Wing On Wing 02Jul14

I enjoyed the mountain winds again today. I repaired Mon Ami electrical with a new battery and some repaired connections... don't try to buy a deep charge marine battery in Summit Co as it is not straightforward; ultimately CarQuest Auto Parts had one. After righting electrical, including mast lighting and "cassette player" (need to get modern Bluetooth/USB version), I loaded both sails and headed out for the afternoon-evening. Wind was mid-strong again with stints of keeling over at 40%! That was a blast. Single-handed sailing with two sails and a rudder to control was interesting... not all maneuvers were smooth (yet) to say the least, but I made it. I even executed the clever wing on wing downwind move twice during the outing. Since I have no spinnaker on Mon Ami, the biggest sail surface to present is genoa on one side and main on the other; see the 2nd image... its a touchy move to keep up. Probably the toughest thing though is raising and lowering the all the sails with wind... I point into the wind initially but I have to move forward on the boat to yank the halyards which leaves the rudder spinning me in circles till the airfoils are abloom. Yeowza.