Sailing with George and Vicky: Wind Storm, No Water and First Day Out on the Bay!

This weekend was crazy!

The plan was to go down Thursday night... finish the move-in and clean up the interior a bit so I could work from the boat on Friday before a weekend of sailing with friends.

I loaded the remaining boat items and headed down right after work. I'll spare you the typical messy boat photos but I will show some nice shots as dusk approached as I finished getting items stowed. I knew it was going to get a bit windy that evening but I had not checked the weather for a few days. THAT turned out to be a mistake.

Looking out to C & D docks from the parking lot.

All ready to work from boat (on the right).

Yes, you can assume the spaces I'm not showing were still a mess.

I watched some YouTube and went to bed, noticing that it was beginning to get a bit breezy. As the night wore on, the wind HOWLED through the rigging and dock lines groaned. The motion of the boat picked up around midnight, so I got up and put on two seasickness wrist bands just in case. (Sometimes when it's rocking below, I'm fine, other times it bothers me... why take the chance?)

In the morning, I awoke and found this weather report and this storm warning (which eventually became a gale warning). The wind was high - high 20s to low 30s, and I guessed and Seas The Day was leaning maybe 5 degrees or so straining agains the dock-lines keeping her tied to the dock.

Seeing that this was going to go through the night and realizing that I had a lot of fine detail to review for work, I decided I had enough time to head home (stopping at Waffle House) and make use of a flat, non-moving desk.

It was basically like a hurricane passing off the coast in terms of what we experience at Osprey Pt. Davis from Shardana clocked 42kts at one point in the evening on Friday. As I left Friday morning, this was the view from the deck.

I took my computer and a bag or two and headed to the car and there I experienced a really interesting photographic moment.

You may recall Ansel Adam's photo "Sunrise" and the associated story he told about realizing that a unique moment was happening and rushing to set up (and having to guess at exposure) before the light was lost from the crosses in the photo's cemetery.

OK... I'm not Ansel, but as I approached the car I saw the the sun was about to rise... it was rim-lighting the clouds and I thought to myself "You should drop everything and capture this". But I'm not Ansel and I took a few seconds to put the bags on the back seat and turned to see the sun had risen (washing out the neat scene I just saw)... the moment had passed.

I started to get in the car when I looked just a bit to the left and really liked how the sun played across the natural frame posed by a few pine branches... so I took a few steps and quickly captured it with my iPhone. I wanted to get started at work so there was no time for playing... one or two quick exposures was it. I processed it in lightroom during lunch and came up with this (which I think I may enter in my company's photo contest).

Sunrise in Rock Hall

I worked all day Friday at home until the power went out (if I had stayed on the boat I could have started the generator), and stayed at home that night.

I went back down early on Saturday. It was still windy and there were small white caps in swan creek, but more importantly, there was no water!

White caps on Swan Creek.

This was high tide! Depth should be reading 8' or so.
(My keel is 4'11" deep)

I've been told about this phenomena... it's called a "Blowout Tide" The high winds blowing from NNW the past few days has blown water out of the Chesapeake Bay, resulting in abnormally low water levels.

If it was high tide now... and if my friend came and we tried to leave (we probably would not have been able to get out), we would surely have problems getting back, so I postponed his visit until Sunday.

By mid-afternoon, the water levels were way below normal.
On a typical day the rocks on the left are at the edge of the creek.

With no guests coming, I decided to use the time on Saturday productively and swabbed the deck, getting Seas The Day spic and span for the next day.

After I finished cleaning, I was quite hungry so I went to Harbor Shack for a quick meal and ended up eating with some dock mates who were there for an early meal as well.

I was lounging around back onboard when I suddenly realized that the AC/heat had cut off. I was reading about this possibility just the other day on the 425 group and opened the bilge and checked the AC strainer... my fear was the low water levels caused it to suck up some gunk (a technical term).

But the strainer was clean....

I checked the circuit breakers... they were on... but no 120 voltage... so now I focused on checking the breakers in the transom... they were off... no blue lights on the smart cables, so it must be the pedestal.

That's when I noticed... hmmm... the pedestals weren't lit up. I looked over at the Inn... it was dark. We were clearly experiencing a power failure - which was a bit surreal because my TV was still running and I had lights on (they run off the house batteries... AC runs off... well... AC).

It was so dark that I should have done some star-gazing. Since I had already had my bourbon for the evening I didn't want to walk out on the docks. Instead, with the TV working I watched Maryland Public TV which was having their pledge drive (these are much easier to tolerate with some bourbon).

If anyone else besides me has read to this point, I'm truly impressed... leave a comment if you have.

In the morning, breakfast preparations had to wait for me to do the yearly propane test... to make sure the system doesn't leak. Once everything was safe, I had soft boiled eggs and toast.

While having breakfast, I received a cancellation from my friend, so after cleaning up, I FINALLY set off.

...

And THIS, my friends, is what it is all about. After all this preparation... the SECOND I untied the last dock-line and stepped aboard it was like all the tension from the last few months just melted away. All was right with the world as I glided out Swan Creek.

Once I rounded the #3 buoy, I set the sails. The windspeed was around 15 to 17 kts and Seas The Day instantly embraced that wind, leaning over slightly and finally feeling free after a winter on the hard, effortlessly came up to 7 kts SOG. It was breezy and cool. I just sat back listening to the sound of gliding through the water and feeling the breeze on my face.

Life is good!