Rory and the geriatric skipper finally got Angels Wings moved from her usual home on the Potomac to Jennings Boatyard at Reedville, Virginia on the Bay, where we're planning to haul her for a few months or longer (depending on how ambitious we feel). After a rather frustrating attempt into a peevish headwind the week before, the weatherman promised to mend his ways and assured light, pleasant downwind sailing. This time it was indeed smoother for us, even though not exactly to plan and the venture took a day longer than anticipated, but oh well.

Sunday morning we put up the red and black drifter and Wings leisurely ghosted down the Potomac at maybe 3kts with about a 4kt following breeze on the nearly glassy water. The nigh on motionless apparent wind invited a pesky spider to begin spinning a web between the stays and it took us hours to actually find the little critter even though his network grew out of reach, nearly to the masthead. Toward late afternoon the wind died to nothing. For a bit, we coasted with the current and slathering on the first sunscreen of the season until we finally figured time was wasting and fired up the little 8hp kicker, shattering the almost eerie silence. We'd planned to sail or motor-sail through the night, but the rear running light crapped out, so we pressed one of those Coleman LED lanterns into service as a stern light and looked for a friendly creek.

After dark we wormed ourselves up a meandering creek off the Saint Mary's river - the LED lantern worked extremely well, but probably not strictly legal, what the heck. After about two hours of feeling our way along in the darkness we arrived at an unfamiliar restaurant dock, where we were told we could dock for free, but the suspicious rural proprietor made it abundantly clear didn't want to see us wandering around his property. Although the skipper had been up this tricky little creek twenty years before, we'd never attempted it in the dark and bounced off the bottom once and narrowly missed some uncharted fish-trap pilings as well; thankfully, no nets were yet set.

The following day, the wind was 10-15kts right on the nose once we got near the Bay and it took nearly six hours of upwind sailing to clear Smith Point (first point south in the Bay on the Virginia side). All things considered Wings remained amazingly comfortable for such a little thing -- with her elderly, stained and baggy sails she is neither at her happiest beating upwind, nor able to point worth a hoot with her untuned rig, but then she's 40 years old (but, decades younger than the skipper), so whatdoya expect. Nonetheless, she shoulders aside the chop with a simple doggedness befitting her Paul Coble designed hull and rarely wets the deck unless the waves are exceptionally confrontational.

In the brisk breeze we were temporarily joined by a monarch butterfly - who knows where it blew in from - and later a stowaway grasshopper that preened contentedly in the folds of the reefed mainsail. We reluctantly admitted we weren't making very good progress, however, and finally decided to motor sail so we could get on in to Reedville before it was too dark (used three times more gas on this little jaunt, a whole seven gallons, than Wings has used in the past two years put together).

The two-foot plus afternoon chop on the Bay had held us up now and again, but we were tied up in Reedville by a little after 22:00. I suppose we coulda sailed at a more leisurely pace, but that's the inconvenience of trying to sail on a schedule. I think sailors need to be retired or on vacation. Had an additional grounding due to skipper inattentiveness in the dark (do ya see a bit of a pattern developing here...), but no real "adventure," and the grandson distinguished himself on several occasions, with chart-reading, relief on the helm, much time with binoculars in hand to avoid the numerous obstructions and making himself generally indispensible on the little boat.