A beautiful SAIL!
Just the other day I was commenting to Rebecca (complaining actually) that it has been far too long since we’ve had a really good sail. You know, sail, as in powered by the wind and not gasoline? As it turns out, the wind god must have been listening because yesterday, we had just such a passage.
The night before our passage we had a pleasant evening in Basseterre, Guadeloupe.
Even Samantha enjoyed it!
With conditions better than either of us could have hoped, we had a beautiful sail from Basseterre, Guadeloupe all the way to Portsmouth, Dominica. The seas were much more calm than either of us anticipated and the wind carried us along at an average speed of about 6 knots, even with our mainsail reefed. We love conditions like that!
What were we expecting? Well, not quite what’s shown in this video but it was what our passage from Guadeloupe looked like last year!
Instead of what you can see in that video, this is what we got to enjoy…
A beautiful close reach. One tack, all the way.
A bit of boat “housekeeping” after our sail.
Working our way into the harbor. Hello Dominica… we’ve missed you.
Glad you had a good sail. Water is still cold in the UK, particularly when you forget to zip your dry suit up completely and then capsize, like I did yesterday!
Interesting the difference between the 2 videos, now widescreen and your filming and post-production skills seek to have improved dramatically.
The wind noise in the first video adds to the effect I think. 🙂
Nicely trimmed sails, good to know you remember how 🙂
Now you should practice coming into harbour and anchoring under sail power alone… Good skill to have. We learned to dock with sail only, encouraged by our 9.9 on the trimaran failing constantly one summer.
Loved the video, looked like amazing sailing weather.
Yeah, we’ll work on that with the Leopard. 🙂
Looks like a nice day! I’d agree with Bruce about sailing in. When you have those perfect days with a good gentle breeze practice outside the anchorage with short tacks, gybes etc. Just play like your in a dingy, I think you’ll be surprised how maneuverable your boat is just under sail in a steady breeze. Once you know, sailing around an anchorage should only make others nervous, ha. Consider it a new exercise that you can develop. Enjoy Dominica!
http://youtu.be/EAyDS1NuK_A
Lol…
That is why you…
A) Practice
B) Practice in an empty anchorage.
C) Not leave up your Canadian flag and embarrass us all while being an idiot.
@ Bruce…Bwhahahahaha
I take it back, on second viewing that Canadian flag was on a boat they hit, not the idiots boat. Whew…
A few snotty days make the nice ones ever so sweeeeeet!
Say, whatever happened to Earthling?
How did storing on the hard in Grenada work out for him? I’ve lost track of time, was that last summer or the one before that ;-))))
Earthling is now in Columbia. After returning to that boat late last fall George headed south to Trini and then West.
http://earthlingsailor.blogspot.com/2013/05/road-trip-in-colombia.html