Century Club: Richard Eggert

I reserved a J/22 from Downtown Sailing Center in Baltimore on Monday night from 5-8pm. Crew was Stephen Kind, who was on his first sail of the year, and Kelly Coyne. Winds around the dock and Northwest Harbor and were 10-15 knots. Winds out past Fort McHenry were 15-20 knots. One of Kelly's friends from work had a drone up and took some pictures of us on our way out and on our way back in.

I was on helm for the departure, and handed off to Stephen near Canton. Stephen was rusty but eventually got the hang of it, though I did manage to scrape my knuckle during one of his jibes and got to use my first aid kit for the first time. We easily made 9-10 knots out past the fort, with Stephen handing off to Kelly about halfway through. Kelly performed superbly, and was quite comfortable with the amount of heeling we were doing in the strong wind, unlike in some of her early sails. With about an hour and a half until sunset, we started back toward Canton, and Kelly handed off to me when we got near where the naval ships are parked. We took a quick spin around the Canton turning basin, then I demonstrated heaving-to for them while a sugar barge was pushed through the channel toward the Domino Sugar refinery. Once the barge was clear, we continued back into Northwest Harbor and toward the DSC docks.

The Women on the Water event was just wrapping up, so we circled around a bit until most of them were docked, then we dropped the jib and prepared to dock. We had an upwind docking and a tight area to maneuver, with pilings to the east side of our dock, so I brought us in just to the west of the pilings, then turned hard into our slip. We came in a little hot, but Stephen managed to step off and stop the boat without much difficulty, and one of the participants in the WoW event handed me the stern line.