Thursday, January 1, 2009

Happy New Year

After a cold and wet new year's eve and blustery winds most of the night, new year's day was clear and calm - dead calm. Not a breath of wind. We puttered around the boat until 2:00 and convinced ourselves that we could feel a breeze and went out - motors on sailboats are a great idea. We had just enough breeze to shut off the motor and put up the sails as we left the marina. Once outside the breakwater, we could see dark water about a mile out. We eventually got there and hurray - it was about a 12 mph wind. We met it as it was headed ashore so our timing was perfect. Others who had gone out earlier gave up and were headed in as we went out.

We had a nice 3 hour sail and even felt bold enough to sail into the marina without the motor. A nice part of this sail was that there were several other boats out that we got to pass close to and wave. For some reason that I don't completely understand, the speed of a boat is limited by its length - size matters here. Anyway, try as we may, we could not outrun a J35 with our C25.

This was our second time out and everything was easier - particularly departing and arriving at the dock. The weather looks good for a long day of sailing tomorrow with a little higher winds than we have experienced so far.

I've also added two more Flickr photo sets:
Dock Sights
New Year's Day Sail

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