[Public-List] Had a nice weekend

[Gordon Laco]

Hello gang - 

Caroline and I had a nice weekend ­ finally got away sailing for the first
time this summer.  Somehow I allowed myself to get booked up with business
obligations nearly every single weekend so far.

Saturday morning we departed Midland Bay Sailing Club and headed over to the
local marina to top up our fuel tank.  The newly freed-up throttle gave us
back our full mobility under power so wiggling in to the available spot on
the wharf between the giant power hogs was fun.    At the marina¹s fuel dock
we met a friend who said they were heading out for the weekend too, and
while the fuel was being pumped, we set a rendezvous for Sandy Bay on
Christian Island. (this is generally understood to be the bay Gordon
Lightfoot sings about in his sailing song ŒChristian Island¹.  I hope it¹s
true)

Away we went, hoping to keep ahead of our friends in their much larger
yacht.  We had a thrashing close reach north after rounding Midland Point,
just able to lay the course north in the 15- 20knots of wind.   While
crossing Penetanguishene Bay, we got the usual blaster of wind out of it so
we tucked a reef in the main.  Much more comfortable, and with speed
undiminished we continued north and galloped up to Adams Point by noon,
where we had to start making ground upwind to the west toward the big
islands.  We did a couple of boards beating hard on the wind but found there
was a lot more west than north in the increasing wind, and we were really
driving hard to weather in a chop.   We were really charging along but it
was getting to be quite wet with all the spray flying.

Caroline and I had a discussion and decided that while we could keep going,
we¹d not arrive at Sandy Bay until late in the afternoon.  We considered a
lovely bay we know that was under our lee (Bone Island¹s so called ³Hockey
Stick Bay²).   The thought of coming to anchor soon in a beautiful quiet
anchorage opposed to beating to windward for many hours in a rising wind and
sea weakened our resolve.... We put the helm up and blasted back downwind.
Eventually we found our friends slogging up behind us.  A shouted
conversation confirmed they wanted to keep going (made of sterner stuff, I
guess), so we parted waving cheerily.  Forty-five minutes later we were at
anchor at Bone, having sailed there on an exhilarating reach with huge bow
and quarter waves.

We settled in and got down to concentrating on shrimp eating, book reading
and of course snoozing....every time I drowsily regained consciousness I
lazily wondered how our friends were doing bashing to windward... Had a nice
supper followed by cocktails. A passer-by in a dinghy complimented SURPRISE
on her looks, saw a hawk fishing, none of the motor boats in the anchorage
ran generators for more than a few moments... Perfect.

Sunday, after a languid breakfast, we sailed off our hook and worked
SURPRISE in light air back out toward the open.  We ended up motoring up
Severn Sound to Midland, but I have to say I was delighted that I had my
engine¹s full range of power back so we enjoyed it, telling ourselves the
long run under power was good for our batteries.  We arrived in Midland Bay
by early afternoon so rather than end our trip, we dropped anchor in Mundy¹s
Bay across from the club and settled down to more book reading a bit of
swimming and napping before motoring over to the club before supper time.

It was a very nice sailing weekend ­ and about time for us!

Gord
#426 Surprise

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