Sailing on the Delaware with Wayne and Leslie

So we went down to G. Winter's Sailing Center again this weekend.  This time we invited Vicky's colleague, Wayne, and his wife, Leslie, to come along for the day.

Wayne had sailed a lot growing up, including some racing, so the day was partly his treat to get out on the water again and partly our treat at scoring some free instruction.  

He coached me in getting set up properly for downwind sailing and then we sailed under the Tacony-Palmyra bridge.  Now this bridge is listed as having a clearance at high tide of 61 feet.  We were close to high tide, but our mast is less than 49 feet from the waterline so we had 12+ feet of clearance.  From our vantage point, however, it looked much closer than that.

After making it through the bridge, I gave the helm to Wayne and he brought us back upwind.  The ladies worked the Jibsheets and that left me free to take some photographs.  We soon had the toe-rail buried and were zipping along, reaching a top speed of 8.3 knots for a few moments.

There was a 50' Beneteau that was out there as well.  It turns out that Capt. Gary was on-board taking photos of us as I was taking photos of them.

Captain Gary taking a photo of us...

 The photo of us that he took!

(Photo by Capt. Gary)

Vicky then took the helm and brought us back into Dredge Harbor.  Docking turned out to be an "all hands on deck" experience.  Fortunately, there's no photos (nor evidence), but at one point we were occupying 3 slips with the boat horizontal to the main dock.  I think the rub-rail will be the most used accessory on our boat for a while.

We then went out to dinner at the Towne Tavern, did a little shopping and then returned to the boat to spend our first night onboard. The marina is beautiful at night!

So we set about learning some of the systems a little more, and cleaning up.  We've been stowing everything in the forward V-berth and we had to find places for other items so we could sleep.

Then we turned out the lights, leaving on the red night lights (to preserve night vision while underway)

In the morning, I woke up early, grabbed a dawn shot of the boat and settled in to update our cruising log (and blog) while Vicky did extensive testing of the mattress in the forward V-berth.