Today we had the opportunity to sail with Carol Hasse, owner of Port Townsend Sails. She’s an amazing source of knowledge when it comes to offshore cruising sails. Back in September 2013 we first spoke with her about outfitting Apropos with new sails. My dad and I sailed the boat up to Port Townsend and spent about 6 hours with Carol taking all the measurements (she personally measures every boat). Around that time we were also adding a bimini to the boat, which required the mizzen boom to be raised about 13″. After the bimini was finished, Carol came to Seattle to take additional measurements for the mizzen sail. In the spring I sailed the boat back to Port Townsend with Lance and Carol (owners of Syrah, another Hans Christian) to bend on the sails. The 4 new sails include a 105% furling Genoa with foam luff, a hank-on Stays’l, a full-baton Main with double reefing, and a full-baton Mizzen with single reefing. The workmanship and quality of the sails are top-notch!

So, back to today’s sail. We had a nice breeze on Lake Union and had all 4 sails out. Carol gave us some good pointers on sail trim, how to properly read tell-tails, how to adjust sheet cars, how to set up a Cunningham on the boat to improve sail shape (leach), how to set up a soft Vang to improve sail shape (luff), and how to rig a preventer. During the 2 hours we did a lot of tacking with Karen at the helm and Carol and I working the sheets and going around to each sail and talking about sail-shape, halyard tensioning, sheet car positioning, etc. We also sailed under a partially furled Genoa and put the boat in a hove-to position by back-winding the headsails. Carol was very pleased with how the sails fit and also how the boat handled when properly trimmed with very little weather helm. We were so busy sailing and absorbing information, we didn’t get a chance to take many pictures!