All last week I had been checking the weather every single day with mal-intent. And much to my delight, all week it looked like Saturday would come with 50-60 degree temps. and 10-12 knots of wind. Those forecasts could not have sounded more like perfect spring sailing weather. Sitting at my computer in my office, reading the predictions, I could mentally feel the wind in my hair and hum to the song in my heart.
But by Friday afternoon the reports showed 15 knots of wind with gusts to 25. I thought to myself, "Gee, not ideal, but doable." By Saturday morning, the predictions called for 30 knot gusts.
Living strongly in the heavy denial stage of the 7 stages of grieving, I rigged the boat and headed out. Sliding out the channel with the wind on my quarter, I thought "Heck this ain't so bad. I have sailed in a lot worse. "
It was only once out in Whitehall Bay, I could see the furiousness of the waves out in the Bay. It was only as I spun Synergy up into the wind to raise the mainsail that the full force of the wind hit me. Even then, in what was a lull, I thought it was manageable. But as I set the autopilot and began to leave left the wheel starting to go forward to pull off the sail ties, one of those, "What the hell was that" kind of a "We-are-not-joking-here" type gusts hit with all it had in it; laying Synergy over perhaps close to 10 degrees under bare poles. I looked at the wind instrument, which showed that gust as 28 knots.
That left me adjudicating the arguments being laid out by the competing voices shouting into the opposite sides of my brain
One side shouted, "Are you a wimp? Put up the main, you can always reef if you have to" While in my other ear, the voice of reason shouted. "Are you out of your cotton picking mind? You are still in a lee, and it will be even crazier winds out there."
The voice of reason won and so I begrudgingly motored back to the dock.
It was still mostly nice to be tooling around out on the water, or as my old friend Chuck would say, It hardly sucked at all.