Saturday, March 16, 2013

She Still Sails!


We have had Dos Libras for a year now and those first months since Bruce brought her home are a blur.  The endless procession of cold, cloudy, windy days we've seen since November have my mind feeling fuzzy.  It has all begun to run together..  I was beginning to feel like there will be no return of the happy summer days of our dreams… 

It has been weeks since we have had the boat out of the slip.  Suddenly, things are looking up.  We have no plans and a forecast of SUN!  The winds may be high but I don't CARE!  We're blowin' this pop-stand…  We got our laundry done on Friday evening.  Our modest marina facility was deserted.  We lounged on the back deck while waiting for our loads to finish.  We were ready to go on Saturday morning.






Shortly after 8 am, Bruce was first in line to use the portable waste pump.  We took care of some housekeeping chores and were off by 10:30.  The winds were forecast to be high and I wanted to be off early so that we could have the anchor down before they really kicked in.  We would be sailing in flat water but things are still iffy with the cats.    

We hooked up our cutter rig and used our hanked on storm sail.  Overkill, yes, but we haven't used it yet and Bruce wanted to try it out.  It's a pretty nice looking little sail.  I've never sailed on a boat with a cutter rig before.  It's cool that we can either use it, or disconnected and stored it out of the way.  It's a pretty neat setup.







Jez huddling in the galley looking green...
The boat continues to prove herself a comfortable ride.  We had winds between 15 and 25 knots and with the full enclosure and the reefed main, never felt overpowered in the gusts.  Unfortunately, even with reduced sails, it was too much for Jezabelle and she finally succumbed to Mal-de-Mer again.  

I guess this makes Jetsam the "good cat" for the day.  She continues to seem unaffected by the motion of the boat and just lounged on the settee much as she does all day in the slip.

We arrived at our anchorage at Ingleside Cove where we found only one other boat.  I guess the winds kept everyone away for the weekend.  Fine with us.  We dropped the hook and opened the two back isinglass panels so that we could poke our legs out onto the back deck for some sun while continuing to enjoy the protection of the enclosure.  

The boat was fishtailing through more than an 80 degree swing.  This will not do!  Bruce rummaged around in the deck bag and found our old riding sail from Elan.  It has seen little use because it was kind of a pain to hoist on Elan.  I was worried that it wouldn't work on DL because we have a split backstay.  I was wrong!  We popped it up in minutes and reduced the swing to about 15-20 degrees.  So we whiled away the afternoon in sunny comfort! 

There were plenty of things we could have done, but we did none of them.  We just sat there, watching the wind blow the tops off the tiny waves in our anchorage and the odd bird flapping against the wind.  It was so nice…

My natural drive to be doing something all the time finally kicked in and I went below to see if I could come up with a cookie recipe.  I found one but wanted to get rid of some granola we've had for a while, so I improvised.  The cookies came out a bit floury but Bruce didn't seem to notice.  The cookies were done just in time to start dinner.  

So this is how we'll spend our days in the weeks and months to come….  So what if there was too much wind to make a dinghy ride to shore sound like fun. So what if the weather is still just a bit cool for swimming off the transom.  Those days are coming and for now, it's just nice to get out and find out if She still sails!

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