My wife, son, and I took the boat out for the first time this year! It was a quick 2.5 mile motor over to the sandbar below Gwynn’s Island. I used my new (to me) Honda 2hp outboard and it did a great job compared to the British Seagull or my trolling motor experiments. I averaged 6.2 mph although the wind was favorable in both directions. We left the dock around 8:30am with a 5 mph breeze from the west, flat calm for an hour around 11am, then the wind backed to the south east and picked up to 10-15 mph with higher gusts.
This year Henry is three and much more interested in doing things himself. He set out across the sandbar to explore, spent a long time giving his toys rides on the boogie board, and can get himself in and out of the boat.
As the boat spun nearly 270º I was interested to see what my homemade aluminum fisherman anchor would do. It eventually straightened itself out once the higher wind and choppier water arrived. I’ve been very pleased, it really digs in and holds well although the lazy fluke is a liability.
Henry can flop himself over the gunnel and into the boat now. It was fun watching him wiggle the tiller and climb all around.
We were the only ones on the beach at 9am, but by noon everyone was out in force. This picture doesn’t do it justice, but there must have been at least 50 boats here. At a super conservative $20k per boat, that’s at least a million bucks. Pretty wild when I think that I built mine for less than $1,800.
I spent the day reading The Long Way by Bernard Moitessier which was a Christmas gift to me by a coworker I worked with for a couple months. We spent a day flushing coolant out of a pair of Volvo engines on a Mahe 36 catamaran and got talking about sailing books we liked. I mentioned I enjoyed Tim Severin’s adventures and he said he liked Motessier’s account of the first Golden Globe race which was a solo, nonstop, around the world race departing from England in 1968. I got up to where he crosses Cape Horn and the Falklands and just before he retires from the race to make another lap in the southern ocean. It’s been an enjoyable read, but at times it’s a little too… something… for me. When he talks to animals along the way I can’t tell if he really believes they’re communicating with him or if it’s just a fantasy to entertain himself. Hopefully the next leg to his eventual landing in Tahiti is a good read too.
Eventually Henry announced he missed home so we packed it up around 4pm. He’d had a really busy day with a short nap and lots of excitement. By now the wind was pretty breezy but the protection from the sandbar was keeping the waves down.
Heading to the ramp. I idled into the dock, backed the trailer on a long S shaped approach in one shot, and had the boat out of the water in 7 minutes. Then another 9 minutes to transfer our loose stuff to the SUV and get the boat strapped down and prepared for the road. Not bad and I didn’t “muck it up” like a lady commented about a guy causing chaos earlier this morning.