Monday, April 13, 2009

The winds have shifted ENE at 15-20 knots today and they were supposed to be SSE. The front has come in faster than predicted. I got up at 6:30, put on the coffee, punched down the bread dough and divided it into two loaves. I only have one bread pan so put the other loaf into a pie pan then let them rise and put them in the oven. There's something about the aroma of fresh baking bread on a boat that has a nice homey feel. I turned off the oven and let the bread continue cooking/cooling down in the oven as we lifted anchor and headed out of our little protected cove. We could see breakers out there as Avalon departed first, heading southward to Royal Island. We probably wouldn't have gone today except for the call for south winds into this anchorage and we only had about 5 miles to run in the deeper water until we could duck back into the bank at Little Harbor and run the rest of the way to Marsh Harbor in relatively protected waters.

We ran into some very choppy seas, at times pounding into 4-7 foot waves or sloshing and semi-rolling with them. I could hear things crashing below deck but there was nothing I could do about it since I had the helm. A few hours later, when Wayne had the helm, I went below and found my bread had come crashing out of the oven (still standing open) and was on the floor along with my aloe and assorted books and stuff that had come out of the lower cupboard below the sink. I must have forgotten to latch it but thought that I had.

I rescued my bread and went back up top until things subsided (a relative term here) before going back below and straightening up. We munched on the bread throughout the day (awesomely delicious) then I made grilled cheeses with it for dinner once we got into Marsh Harbor and had our gin and tonics. Marsh Harbor is packed with boats!

We weaved in and around quite a few boats until we found a spot that looked like we could fit semi-comfortably in and dropped our hook. Twice today, I heard mention that another front is coming in this week. It looks like a lot of these boats will hang out here until the weekend when the front moves through.

I took the computer up top to see if I could connect to the Internet and was able to subscribe to a service here but the signal is very weak. It was good to hear from S/V Samaria (a Bayfield 40) back at Toledo Beach Marina. They'll be cruising next season so hopefully we'll see them out there. An extra email bonus - Keri Whiteaker one of my favorite students found me. She made my day!