A very long “short” day.

We’ve learned a lot of things since we started sailing but a really important one is that things on the water can change very fast, and it’s almost always related to the weather. Take today for example…

Although we were having a blast with our friends Kirk, Donna and Otto, we decided yesterday that we really needed to begin to make our way towards Washington, DC so that we can get our Ham/SSB radio installed. This will be quite a trek and we want to get it done before the Annapolis Boat show which is early in October. We planned to make Solomon’s Island our first stop on the journey, which I quickly computed would be roughly 4-5 hours of travel time. When we untied ourselves from our friends’ boat in St. Michaels, it was exactly 7:40 AM. That’s pre-coffee time!

The wind was so light when we set out that we began by motor sailing. Kirk and Donna’s Lagoon zoomed by us under power as we were busy raising our sails and by the time we caught up to them, they were busy raising their spinnaker. Not to be outdone, we dug into our sail locker and got ours out too. We’re obviously getting better at setting this sail as it only took me 15 minutes to get it up (I’m sure the racers are laughing about that amount of time). So began the day… a fun downwind sail in about 10 knots of wind. How quickly things change!

Yes, we made a bit of a course adjustment which required putting the spinny back to bed but the wind on the bay also clocked about 180 degrees and it doubled in speed. Of course we all know what comes with big winds… big waves! Although the wine we consumed last night might have had something to do with it, I shortly started feeling seasick. Very seasick! It was a long 3 hours of bashing until we were across the bay where the land provided a modicum of shelter from the wind. 🙁

Our short day of traveling turned into a very full day. 7:40 AM departure and 4:15 PM arrival at our anchorage. Let’s hope tomorrow isn’t as crazy!

Oh, I forgot to mention… yesterday morning, just as we were preparing to dinghy into St. Michaels to do some more exploring, I received a message on Facebook from Eric who owns a PDQ 36. It turns out he was visiting St. Mikes (apparently that is what the cool kids call it) as well. Using the magic of cel phones we were able to find one another on the main drag. It was cool to finally meet up with him as we have communicated via the internet a number of times. Eric and his wife Bonnie, who we also had the pleasure of meeting while in town, host an annual PDQ cookout on the same weekend of the boat show and we’re really looking forward to attending!

An octagonal lighthouse at St. Michaels.

Our friends trying to get a downwind advantage over us.

Trying to catch up. Look closely and you can see them up ahead of us.

I think the big winds today knocked this over!

I don’t know what this is but it made us go back out into the channel where the waves were.

Nearing Solomon’s Island.

We made it!