Solo before the Ick
25 July 2018
Last Friday, July 19, I went out for a solo sail after work. The forecast for the weekend and for the entire next week looked icky: hot, humid, thunderstorms, showers, but Friday night was very nice: warm, dry, partly cloudy, nice breeze.
Patti was at the beach with Jill in RI; and Lily was off with her friends, so I went out by myself. I think this was my first solo sail this season.
I got to the boat and left the dock around 5:45. I was a bit concerned that there might be too much wind as the forecast called for 15 mph winds, supposedly diminishing as the evening went on. However, the winds were clearly getting lighter, so I shook out the reef in the main when I raised sail. I had the full genny out with the full main. I sailed southeast out into the Sound on a very high tide.
Winds were around 10 knots, with occasionally higher gusts. Sometimes the gusts would heel me over pretty good. I was running at mostly 3-4 knots, with pretty flat seas. It was then that I started to get texts from both Patti and Lily about dinner.
It was decided via text that we would all meet for dinner at Vespucci's at around 8. So I had to turn around to sail back in at about 6:45. The sail back in was so beautiful, I almost decided to just keep going and blow off dinner. But the winds were continuing to die down, and I knew they would be too light to really have much fun.
So I furled sail outside of the harbor and set up the boat for docking before motoring back in.
My docking job was quite impressive if I do say so myself. Someone came over to help me, then realized he had nothing to do. He complimented me on my docking. Then a guy across the fairway who was standing on the bow of his boat watching me also complimented me. We chatted for a minute, then I cleaned up, hosed off the boat, and headed on to Cheshire and the girls.
Note: the ladder doesn't look like it can be fixed. I've ordered a new one. I will build new standoffs using the pipes from the old one.