Century Club: Tim Ford

Chores on board and a several rowing stints in the dink, one out to the point where the forecast 5 kn southerly was more like 15, gusting 20.  The creek was full of bug life (not too mention ospreys) and if these are not mosquitoes, then I don't know what they are. RAINBOW was full of them.  I guess they are all males, because I received zero bites, even below with dozens of them flittering around.  Also: I thought wrigglers needed fresh water only, yet here are thousands of them in the brackish Magothy?

Recruited a friend from the club to venture out for a quick sail down to the vicinity of MRSA "C" and back. 

We shoved off pre-set for a reefed main and with the tiny jib-top reacher hanked on.  It was puffy.  8 to 18, puffs to 22 or so.  More characteristic of a NW or N breeze, with the freqent boisterous puffs and big directional swings. Even with a grotty bottom and just the jib up, we powered down to MRSA "H" in no time. 

To work back, upwind, we put the reefed main up.  The reef point significantly reduces sail area on this main.  So it was comfy, even in the big puffs.  We were impressed how well the boat did in significant breeze even with the lousy sheeeting angles I had set up with the jib top (outboard and not twinged down), not to mention how foul the boat's bottom is.

Bit of a screw-up when we got back on the mooring.  Somehow some dunce (the skipper) had not kept one end of the bridal cleated. A slight surprise when Kris calmly called back, "Tim, we aren't on the mooring anymore."  Quick motor start and slight entanglement with another mooring float and, with patience, we re-acheived the proper mooring pendant and made things ship-shape.  

Rust. It does not sleep.

Forecast was wind south, 10 kn gusts to 15.  Well that didn't happen. I paddled to the very back of the creek where strainers block any further progress, flipping a surface lure thinking maybe a channa or yellow perch might be hungry and sunning itself in shallow water. Nope. 

But paddling back out toward open water, it looked a little different and once I cleared the windbreaks on shore, it was more like "holy crap, this isn't 10-15." 

From 1430 hrs on it blew 20-25 kn and there was a puff at Gibson Island to 30 (mph). So the paddle back was a chore but no biggie.  

Then I decided to use the wooded point south of PSA  (we need to name that point) as a shelter to see what the breeze was like on the windy side of the woods. It was honking, and breaking waves from the little stone breakwater meant a lot of water was rushing over the shallow beach.  That's a playground for kayaking.  Between the wind and the current, it was fun to paddle as hard as possible and make little or no progress.  

Seemed like fun for a few minutes...this morning, the day after?  Not so much.

Warm day, 80 degrees, to get stuff done.  Got the O/B on board with help of a clubmember who really knows the drill when it comes to lifting something heavy on to a moving target.  Let's put it this way, it went a whole lot better than it did last year (see August 4, 2025).

Splashed the dinghy and rowed for the exercise and also to take a sight line down the row of moorings. Mine, E-4, is slighty shifted south and might need to be dragged north a few yards, to maintain distance from whomever is moored on F-4.

Dinghy still did not leak.