Crew photo!
Mark very graciously offered to do skills practice at Member Sail today, and I wound up with another aspiring skipper named Snow who I had not met before. (She was great!) Warm but not too hot, winds that mostly stayed around 8-10 from the West, with pretty nasty gusts that must have hit 20 at times.
We wound up on J22#13, in the back corner of the weird finger with the dog-leg piling in the middle of it. I had the tiller for departure, which was nervewracking in shifty cross winds off the dock, but we made it away without incident. I was able to get in a few POBs, though I really needed a warm-up after a couple weeks off the dayfleet, and had to take a second pass at one when a gust came in right as I reached the jibe in my quick-stop and I was unable to point high enough to reach my target -- otherwise pretty good. Snow wasn't ready for POBs but got a chance to do some tacking in a pretty heavy blow and showed off good main-sheet control to keep us stable.
Both of us did some practice docking at the T-head, both up and down wind. This was the first time I've had to drop sails for an upwind docking, but it worked out well, and I'll remember it next time I have to come in with significant gusts. We took a quick trip out to Ft McHenry and back, then Mark did wind up taking the tiller back for our final (much trickier) return to the slip. Even he had to take two attempts to deal with the awkward approach angle and shifting winds, but better safe than sorry!