Labor Day Weekend (Jim's family, and Judy & Greg)

Vicky gets her spinnaker deployed!

Thursday

My company gave me an extra day off on Friday of Labor Day weekend this year, so I added a day of my own to make a nice 5-day getaway.  Most of Thursday morning was spent in preparation and after a nice lunch, we headed down to Rock Hall.  Vicky had worked the night before and slept most of the way.

We arrived, unpacked and even got there in time to have some real food prepared by the Osprey Point Inn Restaurant.  (They're willing - sometimes - to do take out from the dinner menu.)  We ate dinner and I rushed out to fill the water tanks - there was a significant storm approaching.

As I filled the tanks, I could see the storm coming in.  The phone vibrated with various marine warnings, tornado warnings from across the bay and severe thunderstorm warnings.  I also noticed various people scurrying around the dock checking lines and the like.  So I doubled up the dock-lines and we hunkered down.

Water tanks are full, waste tanks are empty... a great way to start the weekend.

In the end, it was just a storm.  The tornados stayed on the west side of the bay.  Seas The Day tilted a bit due to the wind stretching out the lines, but they held and all was well.

Friday

Friday was a lazy day for us... we started to prepare to go out and then decided to just stay inside.

We did watch Mulan (the new Disney movie) on Friday night.  I thought it was pretty cool.  Vicky didn't like it as much.

(Disney's image)

Saturday

I started with a walk on Saturday, then later in the morning, Jim and Xiaosheng came aboard along with (some of) their children.  Their littlest one was light enough that I needed to go get a new small(er) life jacket.  I'll let the photos tell most of the story.

Jim is my supervisor at work, so it was great to be able to assign him tasks for a change.

Pre-teens love their iPads - even when sailing.

Learning how to drink from a bottle.

Jim's photo.

You can see that the day was wonderful.  We went sailing for a while until the motion got to Xiaosheng a bit, whereupon we headed in to anchor just off Gratitude Marina.  While at anchor, we had a nice lunch.  It was funny to watch the little one try to eat a sandwich that was almost as large as her head.

Xiaosheng's photo of lunch.

Once at anchor, fishing was the order for the afternoon.  Again, my curse held (I have never been aboard a boat that caught a fish that could be kept).  Eventually, we returned to the dock and fished for crabs at Chester River Seafood.

The little one was funny in how intensely she devoured crabmeat.

At some point, you have to give the parents a chance to eat... I seem to have this effect on all the girls I try to hold. (Xiaosheng's photo)

I had baked a berry pie in preparation for the weekend and we served it with some ice cream for dessert.  The little one made the rounds scarfing dessert from everyone who would spare some.  Vicky always is ready to spoil a child, so she was very popular.  (I ate mine before she could get to me.)

 

Since the little one had avoided a nap all day, we let her run around down below to tire her out until Mom declared that it was time to go.

Sunday

Like Saturday, Sunday morning started out with a walk for me.  This time Vicky joined me and we walked up to Gratitude and back.  We stopped at Muskrat Alley for breakfast, since it seemed in passing that they had adequate outdoor seating that was safe in this COVID summer.

I saw Vicky eyeing the apples on the tree at Osprey Point.  Here, I caught the thief in action!

On Sunday, friends Greg and Judy joined us.  

Almost as soon as we got out and set the mainsail, Vicky declared that since the wind was so light, today was the perfect day to try out our old spinnaker (from Seas The Day 315) on the new boat.

(Editorial note, during the purchase of Seas The Day 425, Vicky had declined the purchase of a new spinnaker, saying that "We only used the old one a couple of times and it would do on the new boat."  I told her that was penny wise, pound foolish since the new boat being much larger, required a bigger spinnaker to move the boat well.  She won... as always... and today was the day to try the old sail.)

To me the purpose of a furling spinnaker is that you set it up at the dock when motion is calm rather than out on the water when the bow is moving up and down, but "nevertheless, she persisted" so even though we were out in the middle of the bay, Judy and Greg got to watch us fuss our way through getting it set up and deployed.

(Greg's photo)

And she succeeded!

For comparison, here is a photo of the exact same sail on Seas The Day 315 (taken from a similar position relative to the bow).

The sail appears larger/better on the boat it is sized for
(But she does have a point... it was evidently last used in 2015)

Of course the old sail is too small... covering less than the foretriangle.  We were able to get it set, but had only enough line on the sheets to secure it in the helm winches (no extra line to adjust).  So it (sort of) worked as long as we stayed on one particular point of sail.  

I think Greg was particularly impressed with her persistence and tenacity as this played out over what seemed to be an hour.

We had a wonderful lunch that Judy prepared and served.  (She always wins for the most impressive guest spread each year.)  Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of the lunch spread, so a photo of Judy will have to suffice.

(Greg's photo)

My attempt to find a friendly boat to grab a photo of our small spinnaker failed, so after lunch we doused and stowed the spinnaker and I began to seek out other boats to argue why we should upgrade.

Here you can clearly see how much larger the spinnaker is relative to the boat.

Once we had the jib out, I noted that we had much more speed from our jib (3.6 knots out of about 5 knots of wind) than we did from the small spinnaker (about 2.5 to 2.8 knots).  Greg helped me by documenting my claim.

(Greg's photo)

We learned on the outbound leg that Gratitude Marina's pump-out facility was out of order, so fortunately, I had some tokens for Osprey's... therefore, Greg and Judy got to help in the pump-out operation.  We'll spare you the photos.

Once back at the dock, we ordered dinner from Ford's Seafood (because everything else was booked) and enjoyed it from the cockpit.

We watched some of the passing traffic.

Later we viewed the sunset from the foredeck cushion...

Finally as dusk settled, we walked Judy and Greg to their car as we did a garbage/recycling run.  I grabbed a few photos on the walk back to our dock.

Monday

There's not much to show from Monday... we lounged around inside the cabin, took numerous naps, ate some of the leftover spoils from the weekend.  Vicky had to work Monday night so I let her sleep while I took care of a few simple boat tasks, then we headed back.