Ah, yes, sailing. Now I remember!
04 June 2012
Finally got the boat back out on the water yesterday. Unfortunately, as a livaboard, I had to unload / trash about 2 tons of junk first. Amazing how much stuff I had packed into the V-Berth! Only slightly less amazing was just how many baby spiders I found living in the folds of my jib sheets. Ugh.
Saturday I had the opportunity to go out on my new sailing buddy's 22 (Sorry Bruce, I've forgotten the make). We had great winds at a steady 14-15 knots. Wonderful day on the bay! Sunday we repeated the trip on Christy Lee, the first time I've had the boat out since my trip up in December.
From our marina, Bear Neck Creek is a short, tight run with a marina on one side and sand bar on other. We passed uneventfully under power and got out on the Rhode River, then south onto the West River. There were a LOT of boats out on the water this weekend, but we still found room to head up into the wind and get the sails up. A painfully slow run took us out onto the Bay, and after some fooling around with the shifty winds we got out away from shore and onto a nice northbound beam reach. Unfortunately the winds weren't as good on Sunday as they were on Saturday, and we didn't get much more than 5 knots headed toward the Bay Bridge. Actually, at one point we had a daysailer in our wind shadow PASSING US. 12,000 lbs needs 12-15 knots of wind to really get going, I'm finding. Of course, it would have helped if I'd had a genoa along, but all I had was my working jib. All of the hanks on by big foresails are frozen up, so we were really at a disadvantage there. Still the nice, leisurely trip about 2/3 of the way to the Bay Bridge was pleasant, and the return trip close-hauled brought us almost right up into the river. On the return leg the winds were really changing, today I find the reason: a cold front was moving in; temps today are a good 10 degrees lower than yesterday!
I did have the opportunity to do something novel while sailing: I Skyped with my kids in VA. While I couldn't quite get the audio working right (anybody know how to switch to speaker when using Skype on a droid?), I did get to surprise them from the middle of the bay. Kinda cool. :-)
In any event, it was nice to get out on the water again, and I've got a renewed interest in getting a few of these projects done, particularly in getting a few instruments mounted where I can see them in the cockpit!
A great couple days out with a friend, thanks Bruce!