Getting Vicky Back Out on the Water

Hard to see, but she's seated just inside the dodger

This was the weekend to finally get Vicky back out on the water.  We drove down to Rock Hall on Friday evening since I had some critical meetings during the day on Friday.  (I do enjoy working from the boat some Fridays, but if I NEED to be certain of fully functioning internet, I prefer to stay at home.)  We had a late dinner at Osprey Point after we arrived on Friday.

After dinner, we walked back to the boat after sunset (just when the perfect amount of light was in the sky) and noticed that the moon was putting on quite a display in the clouds.

On Saturday morning, it was time for some boat chores.  My job was to lay out all the new anchor chain and mark the lengths.  After a lot of research, I'm sad to report there is no consensus on how to mark anchor chain... the three methods seem to be inserts, wire ties and paint - all have passionate advocates and critics.  For now, I chose the inserts.

I laid out loops that were 25 feet in length... here they go from right to left.  The first, yellow, marks about 5 feet from the anchor (to let you know when the anchor is about to break the surface of the water during retrieval).  Because the loops are 25 feet, each represents 50 feet of chain.  The first is blank, making the white mark at 100 feet., the blue at 150, green at 200 and red at 250.  The red and yellow at the far end mark approximately 275 feet and warn you that the splice to rope is about to come past.

My friend, Joe, already advised I may want some earlier marks than 100 feet... I might want to set first at 2:1 scope and then lay out more chain after a first set.  We will figure it out once we start anchoring... and we need to do that soon - I'm running out of excuses.

This table shows the depths at each mark.

After the chain splice (on left), there's 50 feet of rope rode.

Vicky cleaned her boat (of course).

New seats in matching grey!

After boat chores, we finally went out.  Immediately over the bay, the weather was fine, but you could see significant cloud formations from hurricane Henri just to the east (off the coast) on it's way to Long Island and New England.

Despite it being light winds, we were able to sail quite well (pulling 4 kts of boat speed from 4.6 kts of wind).  Vicky quickly settled in to life on board.  

We came across another Catalina 425 - American Dream - with Jeff as the skipper.  Since we knew each other, we traded photos of each other's boat under sail.

America Dream

American Dream

I went forward to adjust the leech line, 
capturing this photo of the jib's shape

All the photos below showing our sail number (49) were captured onboard American Dream from T Jeffrey Clark and his wife.

On the way back I noticed that my chart plotter was mis-behaving.  Here is a video.  I'll have to sort that out soon.  

The clouds from the storm stayed with us into sunset, giving a magnificent display as night fell.

On Sunday morning those clouds finally delivered as an arm from the hurricane was showing overhead just as I woke up.  Soon the winds picked up and we found ourselves in intermittent rain for most of the morning.  So we just curled up and watched some Downton Abbey episodes.

On the trip home, we took the longer scenic route through Chesapeake City were we enjoyed some ice cream at my favorite ice cream hut right by the harbor.  At home later Sunday night, we had a nice steak and salad dinner, ending a wonderfully pleasant weekend.