Klaus Överlund built the sailing Ella skiff as drawn in the space of a month or so, and has sent over a report of his first outing.
I’m delighted that the boat worked without hitches – he must have had everything very well worked out, and that he didn’t capsize despite strong winds. Clearly he has the potential to be a very good dinghy sailor!
‘Ok, still alive after the first sail! The wind was quite heavy even though the lake we sailed wasn’t that big. It was blowing in average about 8m/s (18mph) and the max wind speed was 11m/s (24mph).
‘I hadn’t actually sailed much at all before – my only experience was limited to an hour sailing a Finn dinghy with my brothers.
‘I got the rudder in place and lowered the daggerboard. My girlfriend got in to the skiff and we rised the sail. We left the beach and were a bit nervous about how we would manage to sail without falling in the water. The fair wind got us to pretty fast speed and we went on about two kilometers. The skiff worked amazingly well despite the fact that we both were total amateurs.
‘The way back home was quite hard and took about an hour. At first beacause of headwind we couldn’t get any closer to home beach, but slowly we got used to the wind and the technique of sailing to windward. Finally we got our toes happily back to dryland.
‘Next time a slower and more steady wind would be nice to go on learning how to sail.
‘The boat and the sail worked fine and didn’t let us get into in troubles. I only have two photos from the beach because while sailing, all our attention was fcused on that. It’s good to share these projects.’
‘Klaus’
Thanks Klaus – that’s a wonderful report!
