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Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Swarthmore, PA
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Re: 2018 Sailing Season on the Chesapeake
We headed out at 3 pm yesterday with gorgeous conditions. However, we absolutely needed to come back today, and the forecast looked just iffy enough that we decided to make it an evening sail and come back to the marina last night. Forecast for today didn't look hazardous, but the prospect of wind and rain blowing sideways under our cockpit canvas made it potentially a little less pleasant than my wife wanted. If we could wait it out until Sunday, we might have dropped the hook for the night. Instead we returned to home port and slept in the slip, which gave a chance to do a number of to-do items on the boat this morning before the rain started.
On our way home yesterday we got a little flavor of the weather that was coming, with some vigorous wind on the way back. Unfortunately I had some repairs to do on our spinnaker halyard while underway (chop off a hernia next to the shackle), but I accidentally opened the clutch on our genoa halyard for a couple seconds, which caused it to drop an inch or so and bag out under just the kind of conditions where you want things flat. There was too much tension in the rig to get it back up, so we just fought lousy sail shape the whole way back.
I'm home now, and looking at current conditions on the Bay, it looks like temps are about 6 degrees less than forecast, Thomas Point Light shows 27 kts sustained/30 kts gust, and radar pic shows a big mass of red right over the Bay. For any of you who are out there, I hope you're hunkered down and enjoying some down time in a well protected anchorage.
Rick S., Swarthmore, PA
USCG Certified Captain, OUPV and 50 Ton Master
ASA Certified 101/103/104/105/106
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2001 Catalina 34MkII Tall Rig Wing Keel Breakin' Away, Universal Diesel M35B, Mantus 35 lb. anchor, sailing out of Rock Hall Landing Marina
Last edited by TakeFive; 07-21-2018 at 05:12 PM.