I've had five days of single dad duty while Patti visited Jane in California, but she's back now, and so I was able to take a brief solo sail after work last night.

On my way to an off site meeting in the morning, I stopped off at Home Depot and bought a new gas tote (I still have bad fuel from last year in my six gallon tote that I can't get rid of). I wanted a three gallon tote to match the capacity of my on-board tank, but neither WalMart nor Home Depot carried one. I did find a 2.5 gallon model at HD, so I went with that. These things have gotten much more complicated; my new tote has a ratchet on the spout fitting so that unscrewing the cap is a two-handed operation. Also, pouring from the spout requires not only unlocking the valve in the spout, but also catching a fitting on the spout at the edge of the opening to be filled and then compressing the spout, thereby releasing the gas. All very safety oriented, but a little more complicated than I would like.

The wind last night was blowing a good twelve knots, with gusts to fifteen. I put a reef in at the dock, filled my tank to the brim (still a bit left over in the tote), and went out. I had to wait for some gusts to die out before I could leave the dock.

The weather was perfect: big puffy clouds, about 80 degrees. Dead low tide was about an hour in the past, so I went through the channel, and raised sail in the harbor. There was almost no one else out. A shame because the weather was so very nice. I slipped out between Taunton and Bird Rocks into the Sound. I headed almost due south. I first unrolled only some of the genny, but very quickly fully unfurled the entire sail. With the reefed main and full genny, I was almost perfectly balanced. All the way out to the Reef and then back, I almost never dipped below 5 knots in boat speed. Just beautiful.

I had promised I would meet Patti and the kids at my mother's house for dinner (Dave and Caleb were there too) sometime between 6:30 and 7, so I only got to sail for about an hour. Docking was uneventful, and I was at Linden Shores by 7:30.

This weekend is the Fourth, and I hear that the kids might want to go sailing!