Monday, May 27th, Memorial
Day
Today was our
first sail of the season (sort of). The boat has been in the water for a couple
weeks since we took her out for painting and improvements at the end of April.
Memorial weekend has been an almost total writeoff due to the weather. On
Saturday it didn’t get above 50 degrees! I’m officially disgusted with this
weather here in the NE. On Sunday, we say more rain and winds in the 20-30kts
range. Definitely not a day for sailing, unless you’re doing it in a submarine.
Monday came and with it some sun and reduced winds. We cast off around 11 in
warming weather and 15kts of wind. As we wound our way out of the river, we
passed our old boat club – HBC and some of the guys noticed us (we’re hard to
miss as we’re the only cat on the river) and gave us a wave. Our smiles lasted
another 10 minutes until we started noticing how cold it was (the wind blowing
over a cold mass of water was definitely winning the battle of setting the temperature)
– the comfortable breeze near the docks now felt like 50 degrees or so. What’s
more, it was more like 18-20kts out on the Sound – and the direction would
ensure that we’d have some bashing in one direction or another. Beth was pretty
clear that this wasn’t what she signed up for, so we turned around and made a
beeline back. I convinced her we needed an anchoring exercise to test some of
the changes I’d made to the boat during the winter, so we set up behind the
breakwater in calm water and had lunch. We could only think how nice this will
all be when the crazy weather ends and the water gets a chance to warm up and
we can swim in it again.
We navigated back
up the river as big power boats did their best to tip our cat off balance. I’m
surprised again at how well she stays on her feet compared to our monohull. We
have to catch the waves the right way, but it’s very little fuss.
I turned bringing
the boat back into our new slip for the second time into more of challenge than
it needed to be. Luckily, we had a small crew waiting at the dock to catch our
lines and hold us into place. I’m still getting used to the twin engines and
ability to easily turn the boat using them. It all sounds great in theory, but
it does require you not to jam the throttle forward when you meant to put it in
reverse. Made for some light entertainment and since no damage to anyone or the
boat, I call it a very successful event.
Later, we enjoy
our dinner looking out the open door onto the river and watching all the
wildlife. The low tides bring out all sorts of birds – including egrets, swans,
ducks, plovers and goodness knows what else. On Sunday, we watched a pair of
swans bring their new family of 7 cygnets (yes, I looked it up) out for
breakfast. They came right up to the boat as we tossed them some bread. Daddy
swan was a little ungrateful and hissed at us like he meant to do something
about it. We watched as several of the cygnets decided to climb up onto mother’s
back to get out of the cold. They peeked out at the world from a jumble of
white feathers as mom paddled around. Jeanette was delighted by the show, and
started giving the swans names like, Firewing and Starswan. It was a fun
moment.
