Back when I used to sail the old pokey eight foot plywood dinghy, I was able to consistently sail in the evening after work for a couple of hours, about once a week. I'd bust out the door at 5PM, then head 15-20 minutes north to Fellows Lake. Fellows is a reservoir just north of town and has a bunch of regulations about swimming, fishing and motor sizes, since it's also our drinking water supply. It only took me about 15 minutes to pull the dinghy off of the car roof, stick it in the water, rig it and be off. Once I built the outrigger and it became my primary sailing vessel, evening sailing went away. It took too long to put the boat together and rig it. One and a half hours of prep and take down for one hour of sailing isn't quite worth it. BUT! The new Sea Pearl is easily rigged in 15 minutes and I can once again ply my local waters before sunset. I did just that, yesterday evening.
The wind pretty much died before I got off the water and I got to test out the oars a little more. Once you get the SP21 moving, it rows pretty well and carries quite a bit of inertia. When I was headed to the dock, I noticed a cyclist had biked down to the dock and was watching me. As I got closer, he yells out "Hey, Trevor!" Turns out, my buddy Darren G. was out riding around the lake on his road bike and saw my car. He normally rides trails and frequently races in endurance mountain bike races up to 12 hours and 100 miles long. He's also one of my good outdoor enthusiast friends and if you look back through older hiking/camping posts on here, you'll see the dude a bunch. I've been hiking, floating and camping with he and my friend Brian D. for about 15 years.
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