Mid-winter cruising north of the 48th parallel

To celebrate my birthday on December 3 we spent the weekend on Aurora. Sunday morning broke clear and beautiful with a fine breeze. We sailed up Port Townsend Bay and into the Strait. Then it turned windy and cold, so we tacked back toward home. Sailing into the wind made it all the colder and then it started to snow. Soon we were in a blizzard, with snowflake clumps an inch and a quarter in diameter coming at us at 35 knots. It was a complete whiteout and we needed to use radar to find our way back to port. We spent the rest of the weekend cozily snowed in, the furnace working like a charm. No photos from this cruise!
Compare this with the most perfect mid-winter cruise imaginable. It wasn't until February that we made it back to the boat again. (A holiday drive to California for Christmas with the family was followed by Jack's Mom's passing and a larger gathering of the family for her memorial. ) In the midst of one of the heaviest winters on record we found ourselves surfing across the water while basking in the sun surrounded by the Cascades on to the north and east and the majestic Olympics to the south west. Point Wilson, home to the spookiest waters around, looked like something on a postcard from the Caribbean.

Baggywrinkles?

Baggywrinkles? What's that all about? Worried I'm losing my self-esteem? Well, not really. Beyond what sailing into the wind is doing to my face, the name has a certain ring for me.

Baggywrinkles is a historic textile term. A lot of sailing is textile art - think of all the sails and all the lines. Baggywrinkles are where the two meet: If a sail chafes against a line, both wear out. Baggywrinkles are protection. They're those funny things that look like a merger of a hairy caterpillar, a feather boa and a lambswool duster. They're easy to make. All you need is some worn out or left over ends of rope.
These baggywrinkles are on the rigging of the Raglan, a fine schooner that towers above us here in Port Townsend. It was built in Denmark to haul lumber from the Northwest. Later it was purchased by Neil Young and fitted out with quite a luxurious interior.
Aurora is spending the week here getting a new traveller. (Basically this is hardware on a track with a bunch of pulleys offering a 1:5 effort:energy ratio that lets us position the mainsail. See Glossary of Nautical Terms.) The folks from Port Townsend Rigging have removed all the old, party frozen blocks, installed a new rail and a car with ball bearings, and lines that lead into the cockpit. This traveller, along with our new roller furling system designed by Liza of Port Townsend Rigging and the brand new genoa designed by the Carol Hasse, will make Aurora an easy boat to sail and save crew energy on those long hauls.