At long last Groot is finally sailing!
Winds were mostly light, 10 mph or less (mostly less). Balance felt good and there were no real issues at all, it just sailed well all day in light winds and really accelerated and got moving when the wind would kick up a bit. Was a nice sunny and warm day and a perfect day on the water for a first shake down..I had a blast.
I did manage to (embarrassingly) do two unintentional capsize recoveries. Not because of the wind, which only got strong enough a couple times to really get on it and have the ama fly, but rather from the dumb ballast that is me not moving off the starboard, non ama, hiking seat quick enough when I should have...and comically tipping the canoe over. On the plus side it was no trouble to get the canoe righted and get going again quickly..and no bailing thanks to the self bailing cockpit. The hatches did seem to leak a small amount though, not a ton, but I'll have to try and figure out where and why and seal them up better.
My only real mistake, and one I hopefully will never make again, is on the second capsize in my haste to get righted quickly I didn't make sure it was pointed into the wind and the sheet wasn't stuck on anything. So when the canoe came up, the sail came round and grabbed the wind and would've sailed away without me if I hadn't had managed to scramble on quickly. I was on a lake, near shore, with warmish waters, in a pfd..so I would have been fine...but hate to think what might have happened if the boat got away unmanned on a fairly busy lake...
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