Bad Wind Forecast
The wind today has looked amazing all week. Winds were supposed to be all out of the south at 11 knots for nearly all day. The timing shifted somewhat over the course of the week, but the wind should have been pretty good.
On the way to the marina, we swung by one of Nikki's clients house so she could have a quick meeting. This worked out well. I just hung out in the car and browsed the used boat market.
After that, we headed to the marina. No boats were out when we first arrived, but several appeared to be getting ready to go. The big issue is that the wind was nonexistent. This wasn't super worrying due to the winds being out of the south. South of the marina is a massive mountain range. This often blocks the south wind and causes some odd wind behavior in gusts, but nothing we were not expecting.
We got the boat ready to go really quick and headed out of the marina. The dredges weren't working today, so we didn't need to radio in our departure. Once out of the marina and after turning the last buoy to head north, I slowed way down. After hitting the rudder in the mud last time out, I wanted to hit as softly as possible if we found the hump again. About 160 feet from the turn, I watched the depth go from 5' to 2'6", but we didn't rub at all. I kept us slow till we got outside the deep water markers and then opened up the throttle again while Nikki dropped the keel. To catch the wind from the south, it's often best to get a mile or two out.
Once we were out, we slowed down and raised the sails. And.... they flapped with absolutely no wind. We turned back on the outboard and motored out until the sail filled. After that, we killed the engine and headed out at about .7 knots of speed, not a nail-biter by any stretch of the imagination.
We sailed like that for about half an hour, then the wind picked up a bit more, and we reached about 1.5 knots, which at least felt like we were moving. After another half an hour, we turned a bit to the east, and the wind also started picking up more and more. Pretty soon, we were heading out at about 3.5 knots and having a lot more fun.
Nikki and I went over questions about boat buying and recorded them on our notion page that we keep. This allows us to stay organized with what we are looking for in a boat, how much we expect things to cost, and what we want to bring along. We have been using this more and more as we get closer to buying and moving aboard a boat full-time.
After about an hour, the wind died out again, and we dropped back down to 1.5 knots. We turned back towards the marina, which was about 4.5 nm away now. The wind would pick up now and then, and we averaged about 2 knots for a while. Eventually, though, the wind died almost completely. We needed to get back, so we dropped the sails and turned on the outboard to head in.
Nearing the mouth of the marina after slowing down, we ran aground. This is an area we had just been through the other day without issue, but the barges must have caused some humps right there. Luckily, I flipped it into reverse, Nikki ran up forward, and we were able to slide backwards to get unstuck pretty easily. After that, it was an easy time getting into the slip.
Overall, we were out for about 4 hours, and had a lot of fun, but we did wish the wind had been as strong as the forecast, as we want more experience.
