4th of July Weekend Rendezvous

As you probably know it hasn't been the greatest weather in Southern New England. The late spring and early summer has been pretty wet. Infinite Improbably hadn't left its mooring since Memorial Day Weekend due to weather, family commitments and other obligations. We're on the boat for parts of every weekend but not to sail. We got luckier for the 4th of July weekend. Maybe the weather trends have changed. Maybe not for the worse. On Thursday 2 July I got underway about an hour after the last downpour ended. I was hoping I would not get caught in another of the storms that had been marching through daily for more than a week. Carol was 'at work', keeping an eye on weather radar for me. It was a kind of boring motor trip through The Race and then to Shelter Island, Long Island, New York. Little breeze and on the stern makes for poor sailing while single-handing. It could have been worse, however. A thunderstorm would have made it exciting but I'll take boring over a thunderstorm any day! I arrived at the quiet little harbor on the southwest corner of Shelter Island and anchored. Had it nearly to myself. The crowds would start arriving on Friday, the 3rd. Carol and Heather arrived via the powerboat of a friend in the Waterbury Power Squadron and he and a few others rafted up with our boat. Rafting is when boats tie up alongside a boat that is anchored. It puts extra weight and wind resistance on the anchor of the host boat but usually it's okay if conditions are calm and protected. We had 7 other boats in our raft. Whoops. That's a lot. We had a great party aboard our boat Friday evening as all the people on the cruise from our squadron as well as all the people from the Meriden Squadron's cruise came aboard. I lost count at 27. 27! That is a lot of people on one vessel unless you are used to boating on a mega-yacht. I would guess that our boat never had that many people aboard it at one time with any previous owner. We estimated that if the average person weighed 150 pounds (who is average?!?!?) we had between 4000 and 4500 pounds of people aboard. Our stern boarding steps were submerged at least 8 inches, maybe more. It really was stunning. More importantly it seemed everyone had a great time. The next day (the 4th) was also a beautiful day but the breeze picked up and the strain on our anchor became too much. Even with the second biggest boat in the raft having an anchor out we started dragging. Dragging is when the boat starts moving aft, pulling the anchor right through mud it is set in. Not fun. We had to scramble to get the boats separated before we reached the beach. It was an adventure for a while but we safely broke the raft into several safer two-boat rafts. Carol and Heather were ashore bike riding so I had to 'borrow' Vicky Davis from "Afternoon Delight" to be my crew while we re-anchored. She did a fine job. Might have been in trouble without her. Another adventure. Did I mention I hate adventures? Sunday we had a great sail home to Mystic. We even tried fishing. Fortunately we caught no fish.

Typical Work Day

This is what a typical work day looks like now. Retired. Or as the British say: made redundant.

The photo was taken on a sail to Block Island, Rhode Island. A nice sail in the photo but later it became a great sail as the breeze picked up. Boat speed increased to about 9 knots for a while. That's over 10 MPH for lubbers. Fast.

While zipping along Carol wondered whether we were going too fast. I replied, "in a catamaran there is no such thing as too fast". Shortly thereafter a wave caught the dinghy and it flipped on its side as it hung in the davits. A lot of drag and stress on it as it was catching the seas as we sailed.

End of fast sail.

We had to stop to right it and bail the ocean out of it. When we got organized again it was back to a normal sail to Block.

Another adventure. Sigh. :>/