Monthly Archives: September 2014

Another Fantastic Weekend Away on the Sabre

By Rich

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For the second weekend in a row we had only light winds, and so relied on the diesel exclusively to get to and from Rock Hall. But we had an absolutely fantastic time nonetheless, and we’re happy to be putting plenty of testing hours on the engine before next season. So far we are right on track with our Fall plan of getting as much experience with the boat as possible to (i) learn how everything works (ii) learn as much as we can about living aboard and (iii) find as many bugs / problems / issues as we can so that we can work over the winter to make the boat as reliable as possible for next season. We currently have a very long list of mostly minor problems, which is terrific news. We continue to be most leery of the diesel but our confidence is growing after putting over 15 hours on it over the last two weekends.

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Our First Overnight Away On the Sabre

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By Rich

Wins:

  • The best onboard shower design (in the aft head) of any sailboat we’ve been on
  • The Sabre’s galley can be easily worked by two people at once
  • The V-Birth is super cozy
  • Two four hour stints logged on the diesel (the most suspect part of this boat by far) with perfectly reliability. Whew!
  • Some unexpected, alluring boat porn at St. Michaels. Somehow a couple of beautiful Swans made in between the giant McProductionGrade powerboats crewed by the overly-tanned and the chronically over-served ….

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Throwback: J/88 Sailboat Review

By Rich (Photo Credits: North Point Yacht Sales)

Editor’s note: to get our new blog going, we’re importing articles we’ve written in the past about our sailing adventures together. This article was written in September of 2013, and since then the accompanying YouTube videos have gotten a ton of hits (the most of any video on Rich’s channel by a wide margin). Given the evident interest in the boat, we thought it would be fun to re post the review almost a year to the day after it first ran.

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Thanks to North Point Yacht Sales here in Annapolis, we got a wonderful and unexpected treat today: the opportunity to test sail the brand new J/88 from J/Boats. At 29 feet in length, the J/88 could be considered a modern day interpretation of the 1980s era J/29. As former owners of that wonderful design, we were keen to get a sense of what the 2013 version of the boat would feel like.

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Sunday Video and Photos

By Rich

Sunday was another wonderful day on the Bay: a 10 knot Northerly and high temps only in the 80s. This time I brought friends!

Below: I took a break between my two trips out to chill on the mooring for a while. I love having the boat on a mooring!

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After cleaning the boat up I ran to the house for a couple of items, then stopped for takeout Chinese. When I returned to the boat to enjoy my takeout and settle in for the night, I was met with this incredible sunset!

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Single Handling The Sabre (W/ Short Videos)

By Rich

With Lisa in Newport to contest the J/70 Worlds and other cronies tied up with miscellaneous distractions, I needed to do some single handling today if I was going to put hours on the Sabre to learn how to operate it and to look for bugs to fix before the spring. I learned a lot today and Seb and I had a ton of fun together after a (steaming hot) 10 knot Southerly filled in.

The weekend started Friday night when Brian, Lisa and I took the boat to the Club. After dinner I spent my first night on the boat.

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Key learning: The AC works! And what a difference. I never would have stayed on the boat at the dock in that heat without AC. Very nice! Growing up, our boats didn’t have heat, AC, or microwave ovens. Cruising sure has changed.

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Our First Joyride On The Sabre

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By Rich

I left work promptly yesterday and ran straight to Lake Ogelton. Since Lisa needed to put in some overtime at work, I spent the next couple of hours sniffing curiously through the boat’s nooks and crannies like a hungry mouse trying to figure out how everything worked. How are the heads operated? Where is the engine sea water intake? Which one of these is the speedo sensor? I even had to play a little salon cushion Tetris trying to put the boat back together before Lisa arrived for our planned dinner date aboard.

Lisa brought takeout sushi, and seeing only light winds in the Lake, we decided to head out on the Bay for a sunset dinner cruise. The Lake is a little better protected than I thought, because once we cleared the channel we found ourselves enjoying a nice 10-12 knot SSE breeze and a mild leftover swell.

Continue reading Our First Joyride On The Sabre

Seb is Safe and Sound On Her Mooring!

By Rich

Lisa and I took delivery of Le Saberage today, and she spent the day on the docks at the yacht club while we toiled away at the office. As much as we wanted to take the day off, we had to remember that toys need to be paid for! As soon as the quitting bell rang we all yelled “YabbaDabbaDo!” and ran to the Club to fetch her.

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Alas, no wind, so we motored instead of sailing to her new home in Lake Ogelton. The benign weather afforded us the opportunity to do some practice manovering to make sure we didn’t slam into anything the first time we docked her. Then the real test came when we stopped off at the docks to tie up for a quick hose down. Success! No broken timbers or fiberglass. Finally we tucked her in tightly for a night’s sleep on her new mooring.

The evening was way too short to be satisfying so tomorrow we plan to bolt straight to the boat for an evening cruise and some dinner aboard. We’ve got a lot of testing to do this Fall!

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We Bought A Boat!

By Rich

Le Saberage

Earlier today Lisa and I closed on this beauty, a 1989 built Sabre 42 centerboard! After a fairly long and storied search for just the right boat, we’re over the moon to have found and closed a deal on our new baby. She will be re christened Le Saberage (Google it for the meaning!) and we’ll call her “Seb” for short.

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In the days that follow there will be a lot more posts as we take delivery of her (tomorrow) and begin a series of shakedown cruises here on the upper Chesapeake Bay as preparation for our first full season with her next summer in Newport.

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Stay tuned – lots more to come!