Feels like Spring!

Worked out my work thing early and was able to get down to the river before 11a and in the water not too long after that.

It was beautiful out there. Sun shining and a light breeze pushing me downriver. I was able to tack into the wind, closehauled, except once when the wind got really light and I had to fall off and come around to get on the opposite tack. Is that how real sailors handle that sort of thing? Do a 320?

I was able to get the furthest downriver that I've made it and took a couple of shots of a nice sailboat in the little Greenway Boat Docks.


I fell off and tried to double-wing it back to the launch. I made it a bit past halfway when the wind died completely dead. So, we (Hank was with me today!) took some pictures and emailed them to Kris.

I updated my Facebook status to reflect the fact that my intention to sail had become an intention to float. Got a couple of responses to that one.

Mark in Sydney declared he wants to open up the Australian franchise of my life (he's not witnessed most of it, so this may not be as desirable of a goal as intended), O'Docker requested confirmation of his suspicion that I was doing this in the middle of the day, and Queen Maeve quoted some obscure line of literature from some random children's book author, regarding boats, saling, or messes, I'm not sure. Oh, yes, and later in the evening, the T-man made a veiled reference to my exploits in his Proper Course posting.


So, about this point I figure out I've drifted back toward my downriver nexus about half of the distance I'd gained. The Huck Finn thing is attractive, but when you have kids to pick from school and more writing to do in the home office, a day with feet up on the rail has to have start and stop limits on it. I also thought how nice it would be to have a hat, (North Sail?) since the sun was beating down on my face and I was starting to feel a little crispy.

Adjusted the tiller and started sculling my way toward the West bank of the river in hopes of getting out of the current and making way toward the launch.

A half-hour or so later, I was able to get to a boat dock that runs parallel to the river and de-boat myself and pull the dinghy along for a few hundred feet, which was much faster than the sculling.


Just near the end of the dock the wind kicked up, well, kicked up is strong. A breeze presented itself, so I launched and we were off again. A slow drifty twenty minutes later and we were upstream a bit from the launch. Breeze strengthened so we turned about, dropped the centerboard and scooted into the launch on a starboard tack, closehauled.

As I got in between the ramps I pulled up the centerboard, furled the jib and the wind pushed us leeward abeam to the dock. A nice gentle landing and I released the mainsheet to kiss the dock.

Hank was off in a hurry and we headed for home shortly after getting the boat out.