Hallowscream!!!

Our dock neighbors

Armed with good wishes and leftover prize-winning chili from our boating friends, we left our temporary home yesterday morning under the cover of darkness to make the bridge opening at Kent Narrows at 6:30am.  It was low tide, which is the only way this behemoth mast can fit under the stationary bridge right next to the drawbridge.

We sailed through just fine.  We had to keep a sharp eye for the marks as the channel is narrow and you can lose 10 feet of water depth in seconds. 

"Damn *&^#%$%@#+*&^*"  What were these epithets flowing from the Captain's mouth?  Oh no!  The gauge for the engine coolant was off the charts!!!!  Oh crap!  What do we do?  What do we do?  Were we going to blow up?

He said we had to turn around and go back.  No, no, no!!!  All I could think of was how frustrating this whole (non) trip had been (with some bright spots, of course) and now we were having to abort the trip again.  Instead of going back under that dadblamed bridge, we sidled up to the docks at Harrison Yacht Sales. 

After what seemed-like-hours minutes of checking the heat of the unit with a manual thermometer, Gary realized that the cooling liquids were not poised to blow.  He surmised that the gauge was faulty.  Now this comes even after they had just tested it a few days before. 

I was barely awake before we left, but now with pounding heart, I had get back to fairly calm and peaceful as we decided to continue on our way.  To make things better, a warming sun made its appearance.  The weather was very cool, but dressed in layers and layers, we were fairly comfortable.  Well, two of us were.  The boy crawled back into his bunk with the heater dog and ended up sleeping until almost 2pm; that may have been because the night before he had stayed up all night reading "The Art of Racing in the Rain."  He couldn't put it down and was quite moved by it.

Lunch!

Rope Clutch

Wing and Wing

The sailing was almost too good to be true; less than 10 knots of wind was just fine for me. Gary (Cappy) even had lunch on the foredeck because the sun shone warmly enough to make it like a picnic. We worked on getting a line realigned after it had become tangled with another in the rope clutch (the box that leads lines from the cockpit to the sails and mast).  Sometimes we had to go wing and wing to get as much of the wind that was coming in from behind us; the main can keep the wind from hitting the jib, so if you have the main sail on one side and the jib on the other; you get freer flowing air strength.

Whisker Pole

Later in the day, when the wind lessened even more, we used a whisker pole to hold the jib out to grab every bit of wind power she could.  It worked great and we made pretty good time. 

Container ships, several other sailboats, crab boats, power boats, and the Lady Maryland came by. 

I ended up taking a nap around three o'clock, not a deep sleep, because occasionally I would see Gary or Elliott at the door, or Elliott glaring at me from the other side of the bed (he's weird), and then I was fully waked loud thrum of the engine starting up.  We were going to have to hightail it to make the curve at Point Lookout State Park before dark.  And we didn't succeed.  I will tell you right now that I'm not a fan of sailing in the darkness.  My eyesight is such that I can get by in the day, but at night, my brain, though seeing things, draws a blank as to what they mean.

Elliott and Gary were on deck, so I went down below to start heating up the leftover chili from our friends and bean soup from my stepmom.  Elliott came down to use the head.

"&$*#%#^$%@#^@#*^" came from the cockpit, as the boat was forcefully downshifted to keep from hitting what turned out to be those fishing nets so prevalent in the Potomac River.  Yikes!  (We surfed over some back in the day in our old boat during a "breezy" (Gary's term) sail after a hurricane had come through.) Scared me to death!  I flew up the companionway just in time to see the sticks just feet from the starboard side of the boat.  Oh my!

Cappy!

I made a new rule then and there; if we have to do night sailing again, there should always be two people on deck, one at the helm, and one with a flash light scanning occasionally for such impediments.  If someone comes below, they should ask the third to take their place on deck.  These stupid fish stakes are not marked on any map because they're moved around all the time and the owners don't even take the trouble to put on reflectors or lights or anything.  Gah!  Infuriating and my chest hurt from my heart pounding so hard!

Staring Contest

We anchored close by at Point Lookout State Park as that was our original plan, ate our awesome leftovers, kept as much heat in the cabin as possible since we wouldn't be turning on the heat overnight, and slipped into our sleeping bags to catch a more restful sleep.  For a seemingly wonderful calming sail, that was enough excitement for one day!