We took Valkyr (a Downeaster 38, Mast head sloop cutter rig) out a couple of Sundays ago. It was supposed to be Angela, Zsanic, Jay, Eva, Barbara and me on the boat but a few days before we were scheduled to go out Angela found out she had to work. When she did she offered to let me captain the boat and take everyone out anyways. To be honest I have several people that have made similar offers of letting me take out their boats and I never have felt comfortable being responsible for their boats. Up till now I have always just said thank you for the offer but never taken them up on it. However, in this case, there were a lot of people looking forward to going out on Valkyr and it would be the only chance Eva would have to go sailing before she went back home to Slovakia. I have probably sailed as crew on Valkyr more than just about any other boat other than my own so I am very comfortable with how she handles and sails. The next positive is that Jay was going to be onboard and I knew that I had a very experienced boater and sailor to give a hand if I needed it.
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I stayed on Sea Puppy this weekend and early week. I know she will be coming out of the water soon.. Just a matter of days really. I don’t really want to think of it. Everyone one I know has invited me to go sailing with them when I pull Sea Puppy. Sometimes I wonder at how fractious our sailing club is. Times like this makes me see it for the family it tries to be. Though the only blood binding us is that spilled on our boats and taken by the ocean to pay our dues for using her it is still a powerful binding. There is a brotherhood not really spoken of but it is felt. So for any of you that read this…. Thank you brothers and sisters! It has continues to meant much to me. Miriam and the kids went out with me today and we motored out to Waities Island and anchored near shore. The kids had been wanting to go putt putt golfing but I didn’t go along with that. I know how much they like it but I really wanted to spend as much time on Sea Puppy as I could before she comes out of the water next week. It ended up being one of those glittering days that all goes well on. William and Emily had a great time playing on the beach at Waities. I played with them some and the rest of the time spent scraping Sea Puppys bottom. Over all she was really clean. Nothing but a handful of barnacles. I ended up snorkling with a the while plastic handle that heavy duty scrubby pads come glued to. I had one I was going to wipe the bottom with but the glue fell apart in the sun while in the cockpit. The plastic scraper I had bought, broke within a few minutes and Miriam had started using the handle. It worked great. Protected the hand and was hard enough to scrape with but malleable enough to not break. I took sea puppy out sailing today.. not many more days sailing left for her this year. I will be taking her out of the water this coming week. 🙁 Next morning we left anchor under sail and due to error on my part got into shallows that the rudder touched. We were moving very slow about 1/2 knot. Not much wind and flat other than a few wakes. I dropped engine quickly and just backed straight up when then next wake ripple came by. again no fuss or muss.. It was all very embarrassing though.. second time in two years that I have touched bottom. 🙁 We did the long motor back to the marina and did breakfast with the gang 🙂 actually we were pretty lazy the rest of the day hanging out with everyone at the docks for most of the rest of the day. The night of the 4th this month we went out and anchored out but we left late from the dock.. maybe 9pm… it was very very dark (no moon at all) and all the idiots on the water kept trying out their 10 million candle power spot lights directly on us. We got about 3/4 of the way to the inlet and were winding through an area just past the calabash crossroads when the water depth started dropping and dropping… I thought I was in the middle of the channel when just to starboard the red dayboard marker slid by. This is the dayboard marker that when your on the other side of it you stay about 100 feet away not to get into to shallow water. I was between it and the bank of the island. It passed about 10 feet away on starboard and we could barely see it. Combination of just plain dark dark and our eyes getting blasted by multi million candle power lights. We didn’t take Sea Puppy out sailing. Actually we were tired and just heading home but Miriam decided we should just go sailing with Angela on Valkyr if she hadn’t left the dock. 🙂 so we did 🙂 pictures here 🙂
Noseeums invaded in force and we decided to motor back. So it wasn’t a long morning on the water. Went out and anchored overnight behind bird Island 🙂 very nice. What an awesome morning. I sat in the cockpit with a mug of hot tea and for a very quiet and calm morning start. A little bit later Patty and Jeff showed up on Pirate Girl and I tied them off behind me and went over and had breakfast with them. After Breakfast they took off and headed home. They had had a rough night anchored offshore when the winds kicked up into the low 20knt range. I sailed off the anchor with just the main up. 🙂 I am really enjoying working on my engineless sailing skills. Each time I do this it gets easier and I get more confident in being able to cope with an engine out issue. Well we were supposed to race to Murrells Inlet on saturday but for one reason or another it didn’t happen. Everyone else bailed and decided to do a Sherman and back race instead of going to Murrels inlet except me on Sea Puppy and Patty & Jeff on Pirate Girl. We left around 8 in the morning and once out on the ocean there was no wind. So we decided forget the race we will just motor for a while till the wind comes up.. 2 hours later “no wind”. Patty decided she didn’t want to motor all the way to murrels inlet and I went along with it as at this point I was just happy hanging out with her and Jeff. We were about 10 miles down the coast line from Little River Inlet and 3 miles off shore. We just anchored there. It was about 36 ft of water and the water was very clear. I almost went swimming to give the bottom of the boat a scrubbing but I got lazy. We were going to raft up but even the very light swell was making them rock to much so we just tied me off of Pirate Girls stern about 20 ft behind her. It was a great afternoon of lazy 🙂 We ate and kicked back under tarps for shade and read and napped. Jeff rigged up a seat cushion on the end of a line to float watermelon over to me. A good time was had by all. We heard Orrin and Angela head back to the dock about 5am sunday morning. Angela had to be at work at 8 so they had to get going early. We rose a bit slower than that. more along the lines of 7:30 or so.. Underway at 8:30 and back to the dock to join Breck, Orrin, and Jerry for breakfast. I wish the inlet was closer to the dock. It took an hour and half to get back to the marina from the inlet. And again no pictures because of missing camera. |
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