2023
May 5th
Another
May 4th
Wasn’t too wet this evening, so I did a short 12km ride to buy some milk.
Issues
Lights
I really don’t know if they are good or bad. It is hard to see enough in a car, and on a bike it felt kind of worse. I do know that these lights are WAY brighter than the Honda.
Horn
I think it should be louder, might put this on my upgrade list.
2026
The Wind Rider 17
Today I started something I’ve been circling for a while: properly going through the Wind Rider 17.
I bought it about ten years ago and had a couple of good seasons — kids aboard, friends aboard, plenty of fun. Then life got in the way: heart surgery, COVID, the long quiet stretch after losing Mum. The boat sat. And boats that sit don’t wait for you — they quietly fall apart.
So today was the honest inventory day. Walking around it with a notebook, naming every broken thing out loud. It turned into a long list.
What’s failed
The motor
The electric motor doesn’t run. That’s the big unknown — could be the battery, could be a corroded connector, could be the motor itself. I won’t know until I pull it apart.
The ropes
Every rope is stiff and tired. Sheets, halyards — all of it salt-hardened and crusty, some with silicone worked into it. They feel strong underneath, which is something.
The metal
This is the one that worries me. The trailer is rusted solid throughout. And there’s a plate low in the boat — semi-structural — that’s gone powdery, with most of the bottom edge simply missing. Metal doesn’t grow back.
The trailer
Beyond the rust: rollers missing, slides with no carpet left so the boat slips straight off them, the winch completely seized, the jockey wheel barely turning.
The electrical
Connections that should be waterproof aren’t. The chartplotter mount, the depth transducer, the anchor light — all need redoing.
…and the obvious stuff
Both trampoline nets torn through at the edge. The jib sun-cooked. The rudder full of water and sealed so it can’t drain. The pontoons so stiff you can barely slide them out.
The main sail is fine. One thing. I’ll take it.
It would be easy to be discouraged by a list like that. Oddly, I’m not. A few months crewing on the Enterprize — bending sails on and off, knowing they strip all the running rig off yearly — taught me that none of this is mysterious. It’s just work, one rope and one fitting at a time. That’s the plan: strip it right back, and put it back together as if it were new. I did not have confidence to do this in the past, now I do.
I’ll add photos to the Wind Rider gallery as the rebuild goes on.
Enterprize Tall Ship
Amazing trip on the Enterprize.
What struck me most was how much I learned from everyone on board. The crew took the time to teach me how to tie proper knots, and someone showed me the trick of painting nail polish over a white light to turn it into a red light. Such a simple, clever hack.
Everyone was incredibly patient. Nobody made you feel silly for not knowing something — they just showed you again until you got it.
And the captain — even after fifteen years of sailing, still gets genuinely excited every time dolphins appear. That kind of joy doesn’t fade when you love what you do.
