Fun Sailing a Sidewinder

I thought about titling this "Way To Much Fun For 750 Dollars". I picked up my Sidewinder in July from a guy on Craig's list. He originally had it posted for $1200 (about what the boat with jib and trailer sold for new), but since there are a lot of boats in that price range and I had never heard of the brand it didn't catch my attention much. Then he dropped it to $750 and I did a google search and found this website. WOW great information. Thank you so much....so I bought the boat.

My wife and I had only sailed a Sunfish once before while on vacation. We took the boat to a small reservoir a couple time and sailed it in cat boat mode and got comfortable with getting it rigged and sailing it around the lake. The weekend before last we took it up to Wanapum Lake on the Columbia river up in central Washington. My wife's sister and brother-in -law, have a vacation cabin there. He has been racing Thistle sailboats for years up in Seattle and he gave us each a little lesson and we got the jib figured out. We had a fun time sailing it on some bigger water where we could do long reaches without have to come about so often. I'm feeling more confidant about the boat now.

Yesterday we took it out on the Columbia River in Portland. The tide was going out so there was a pretty good current running. There was a steady but light west wind blowing up river against the current. All the bigger cruiser type sailboats were pretty much sitting barely able to hold their own against the current. We went wing on wing, pulled up the center board and ran straight up the river for about 2 miles. The only boat moving faster upriver was a cal 20 flying a big spinnaker. Then we turned across the river and did beam reaches back and forth as the current brought us back down to the dock. Got it up planning with the center board humming a few times. Sailed it right in, rolled up the jib, dropped the mainsail and floated right up to the dock. WOW, what a fun little boat!!!

Life is good!!!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/15/2007 08:36PM by sidewinder824.

Well, got another good day of sailing on the Columbia in this week. There was a little more wind and a lot more sailboats out so it was pretty exciting. Saw some pretty impressive sailing from some of the big cruisers, catching the wind and heeling over reaching down river fast. We still were among the fastest running up river wing on wing. It is a big advantage to be able to raise the center board and reduce that drag when running with the wind. It feels like shifting gears when the center board is pulled up. The fun really starts when you turn across the wind and drop the center board. We went ran up river and back three time this week. We are still learning to sail and I'm sure no where near the full potential of the boat(we haven't dumped it yet), but we are sure having fun.

I'd love to hear from other Sidewinder sailors. Anyone else still getting one of these old boats out on the water?

That's awesome. Have a Bandit, not a sidewinder but look forward to getting her underway.