The weather was supposed to be pretty nasty - but I forced Laurie into going sailing on Saturday anyway! Fortunately for her, I had to work Saturday morning - so by the time we actually left and got to the boat, the clouds had emptied their contents and we had a relatively dry afternoon.

Wind was light so we only sailed as far as Fogland (again) - but it was interesting sailing in the light air.

We anchored at Fogland - right next to the same Island Packet that we'd anchored next to in the same spot just a couple of weeks ago. We relaxed in the cockpit and decided to drink our evening meal and not bother cooking! Marvellous!

Sleeping was a little difficult - the wind shifted (as predicted) to the North East, where there's little protection at Fogland, and we seemed to have some wind against tide type action, so sleep was not so easy, but we managed. Sometime during the night Laurie woke me up to tell me the batteries were down to 8.9V !!! Fortunately, I realized that I'd de-combined the batteries and I think we were operating solely on the little engine battery.

In the morning I got the generator going, and pumped in some needed AH into the batteries. I think all is well - but not completely sure... having difficulty working out all the systems...

We decided to head home fairly early and since there was no wind, we motored - until all of a sudden we had about 10kts! Engine off, let's have a bash! We managed to sail all the way back - up the Western edge of the Sakonnet where we'd not sailed before. Made for an interesting sail and we even made it through Stone Bridge, where the wind gave up and adverse current slowed us to less than a knot. We were back at the mooring at 1:00 and who should arrive but Jane and Mike with Bob and Gill in their dingy... want to go sailing?? Booze was promised, so we decided to see how a Bristol 45 sails!

For the second time in the weekend, we sailed down to Fogland - actually a little past. We don't know what speed we were doing because Mike's knotmeter doesn't work and he's not got the chartplotter set up, so I find myself tweaking sails according to the wind on my face - which is what all the old salts say you should do anyway! Mike is therefore an old salt in my book! Of course it would be easier to trim the sails if the helmsman would keep the boat on a reasonably constant heading - but then I guess that would take all the fun out of it!

We got to Black Point and turned around and headed for home, into the wind. Initially Jamin did quite well, but when the wind fell to about 10kts apparent, we were not able to make any headway against the current - tacking repeatedly towards the same points on either shore... so the Iron Genny was brought into service.

Although I did my level best tweak the sails all day and keep everyone on their toes, the rest of the crew were insistent on relaxing and having a good time! We consequently had a very nice relaxed sail aboard Jamin - thanks Mike & Jane!