Boat sunk in Mill Creek
I must admit to a bad case of John Masefield syndrome or in street jargon, I was seriously Jones'n for a sail. And although the winds were very light wind, it was great just to be out there.
It didn't matter to me that Synergy was barely moving. It was good enough that she was moving fast enough to 'boil water', maintain steerage, and slither wakelessly past small fragments of foliage drifting by on the surface of the water.
For most of us, and certainly for me, the joys of sailing is in large part sensory. Sometimes it's a tactile sense of forces of wind and water, or the warmth of sunlight on your skin. Sometimes it's visual enjoyment of the passing beautiful scenery. Today it was auditory. Today's sail was about as silent as it gets out there, a profound silence punctuated by distant sound effects.
A distant fog horn.
The honks and wing slaps of a distant flock of geese taking flight and a raucus debate about who will navigate the next leg of their passage.
Or a hundred wing whistles of salt ducks in flight a half mile away,
A random Jake brake from a tractor trailer truck on the Bay Bridge 5 miles away. Or
The rhythmic "piiitchtoo....piiitchtoooo....piiitchtoooo" of someone trying to pull start a recalcitrant outboard.
So, while I may have only sailed perhaps a half mile (at most) round trip, It was good for my soul.
On the other hand, I saw a lot of evuidence that the winter storms were tough on some of the boats along the creek. Coming up the creek I saw torn winter covers, a tattered bimini, and the frayed edges of furled sails were in full evidence. And then there was this poor specimen in the photo. I was deeply saddened to see this tragedy since the owner put a huge amount of work into this old girl, replacing all of her standing and running rigging