Salty Sailing

We were up early again this morning to leave our anchorage just before sunrise. Once we reached the bay we raised both sails and enjoyed some nice sailing. After a few hours the wind increased so we added a reef to the mainsail (shortened the sail.) Even so, the sailing was a bit too sporty for my tastes. The western shore was initially close enough to keep the waves down. But the waves increased to 3-4’ once the shore fell away at Mobjack Bay and the York River. The occasional wave would crash over the deck and splash onto the windows. The first photo I snapped today shows the dried salt on the windows. The next one shows George using the water from our garden sprayer to rinse them off. I wish I taken a photo yesterday—the windows were so salty I couldn’t see through them when driving into the late afternoon sun. 

A few things have broken since we left home. The first thing to break was our autopilot fob. It is a little device we attach to a belt loop and use to control the autopilot. We depend on it A LOT! Fortunately, we had a spare that wasn’t TOO difficult to dig out from under the aft berth. The next thing we discovered was a rip in our mainsail batten pocket that allowed one batten to poke through the front.  The batten is about 12’ long and is now lying on the floor of the cabin. I am hoping the batten pocket can be repaired (by me or someone else) once we get to Beaufort. In the meantime we are sailing without one batten.