Another First

One thing I can say about sailing, there are always new experiences. Today’s new experience was rounding up on a downwind point of sail. For all of the non-sailing readers I will explain what that means. The boat rounds up (turns into the wind) when the boat is heeled over (leaning over) so much that the rudder (which is under the boat, is connected to the wheel, and does the steering) can no longer do the job of steering. When the boat can’t be steered it turns into the wind. We have had it happen when we have had too much sail up and are sailing upwind (when the boat it already heeled over). Today it happened when the wind was behind us and we weren’t heeled over.  When we left Solomons early this morning we were expecting winds in the mid-teens, gusting to twenty. When we turned south in the bay out of the Patuxent River the wind was as forecast. Our full main and no jib seemed to handle it just fine. However, the wind started to build to the mid-twenties with gusts to thirties. The seas started to build also and they were pushing the boat every which way. Just before we rounded up we were hit with a big gust, which heeled the boat over, then a large wave which heeled it over even further and pushed the bow toward the wind. At that point George lost the steering and the boat turned completely into the wind. It was so abrupt that he was convinced we had run over a crab pot. He didn’t want to start the engine to get the boat moving in the right direction again because he thought we might have a line caught under the boat. We didn’t, though, and we were soon underway again. It was quite a challenging sail until the wind and waves calmed down in the afternoon. They calmed down so much that we had to motorsail for a few hours. Feast or famine. 

We are now anchored in Fishing Bay on the south side of Deltaville. It is a large, peaceful anchorage with several other boats anchored. I imagine most, like us, will raise their anchors and continue heading south tomorrow morning. 

Sunrise from the Patuxent River

The good part of winds close to 30 knots is we were moving at 9.7 knots!  That is fast for Breeze On.