Spinnaker ride
24 January 2014
Susannah Townes
Today we were gifted with the perfect wind speed and direction to fly our spinnaker for most of the day! A spinnaker is a huge, colorful lightweight sail that flies out in front of the boat to be used in downwind runs. The beauty of it besides its natural elegance is that you can sail in quite light winds and sail fast. Normally when one is out day sailing you wouldn’t use it because when flying downwind in the back of your mind the thought keeps nagging “This is fun but at some point we’ve got to turn around and go back upwind”! Today the direction we were going WAS downwind….for 35 miles!!
Townes discovered that a NASA launch was going to be occurring and we witnessed the launch on our boat against a dark, dark sky. We slept to the sound of the Eastern Florida Railroad that has been paralleling our journey south each night.