My son Dave Ohler wants to make sure that I make it into the Century Club. We both had yesterday scheduled to sail together. We eased out of the slip and headed out into the Patuxent River basin and we found the breeze. We sailed west, before tacking and sailing to the Solomons bridge. We took turns taking the helm. I was at the wheel when we sailed under the bridge and after discussing the idea, we gybed, sailed back under the bridge and returned south. We criss-crossed the water south of Solomon's Island several times, before reluctantly turning for home. The problem was, neither one of use wanted the day to end. We sailed up back Back Creek under full sail. We couldn't make the second mark up the creek, so we tacked and headed in a westerly direction for a quarter of a mile, before tacking again and heading north. We opted to pass up our fairway at Calvert Marina and instead continued up past Zahnisers. Approaching the old boat sheds at Washburn’s, we again tacked twice, sailing up past Spring Cove, and eventually all the way up to docks off off Holiday Inn. We sailed back down Back Creek, but still it wasn't enough. We developed a plan to sail into our slip at Calvert Marina. The yankee sail was furled first, then the stay sail was dropped on deck. I made the turn down our fairway under full main, dead-down wind. One final gybe before Dave released the main sheet, and we coasted into the slip. Perfect. We both agreed that this one will go down as one of our top-ten sailing days ever! Put a gold star beside this one!
98 is in the books. I can taste "100" now!