Maiden Voyage of the "Left Foot"

It's launch day! I chose a small island in coastal North Carolina as the site for the maiden voyage. My folks have a house here, and you can almost always count on a 15-20 knot breeze blowing from the Southwest. The only problem here is that it is the middle of February, and we woke up in the morning to a brisk 22°F outside temperature with no wind. I'm glad saltwater doesn't freeze as easily as fresh water, or I may have had to design the boat with extra armor up front for breaking ice.

This is the boat on the trailer, strapped in for the highway. I towed this over 170 miles from Raleigh without incident, so I think it will work out.

A beautiful wintertime coastal sunrise. The house faces out the South side of the island, so you can see sunrises and sunsets over water this time of year.

Luckily, the high temperature for the day was predicted to be a balmy 56°F, and the wind was supposed to pick up. When the breeze started blowing and the warmer air started moving in, I began assembling the boat. Here you can see the boat ready to go down at the water with the Toto canoe standing by as a "rescue boat" if needed. I'm not planning on going very far out, but you never know what can happen.

A closer picture of the boat ready for action.

I christened the boat "Left Foot" in honor of the foot injury I sustained that inspired its creation with a generous portion from a good bottle of Scotch Whisky (and taking a little pull for myself). I'm wearing a full wetsuit underneath a rain suit here, fully expecting to get very wet in very cold water.

My sail designs were made by Omar Sailmakers in Beaufort, NC. If you are thinking about building a sailboat also, I would highly recommend them. They can make anything you need, and they are very reasonably priced.

After figuring out that paddling into the wind with the mainsail hoisted is pretty hard, I decide to drop the sail and paddle out further before hoisting it again.

There I go, paddling away.

Now it's time to hoist the mainsail...

...and cleat the halyard.

The mainsail is up, and the wind is blowing from my starboard bow. All I need to do now is trim in the mainsail and harness the wind's force.

The mainsail is trimmed in, and we're off. I decided not to mess with the jib on the maiden voyage to minimize what's going on in the new boat. The main is providing plenty of power in this wind, though.

A video of the Left Foot in action. It really can move!

Another video. According to the GPS, I got up to 9.4 MPH in that wind. I wonder how fast it could go if I also used the jib?

There I go, sailing away in the new boat.

After a successful tack. Tacking in this trimaran is difficult, since it is so lightweight and wide. I needed to get up a good bit of speed before it would tack reliably. Maybe with more experience I'll get better at this.

The voyage was successful! I think I'll really like having this boat.

One happy sailor.

The Left Foot after its first sail.