>Well, we pulled it off. My wife, my 6 year old son and I sailed from Pt.
>Judith, RI to Block Island, spent 5 nights on the boat there (in a marina),
>and made it back. We wanted an adventure, and we got it.
Congratulations! "Adventure" counts for a lot, especially down the
road. I'll bet your son will remember it when he's 30. I was (and am)
fortunate to have parents who are adventurers and were when we were growing
up. With five small boys and on a minister's salary, our vacations were of
necessity low-cost affairs. That meant lots of camping, hiking, exploring,
all over the country. (We were early adopters of a VW Microbus, the
land-based Potter-analog of the time, mostly I think because it would hold
all of us and my parents could afford it and not much else.) Anyway, I'll
be 54 in two weeks and those early trips, including the disasters, of which
there were a few, are among my fondest memories.
>Thursday morning, the marine forecast was for 10-15 knot winds out of the
>southeast, and seas 1-3 feet. In the harbor, it was blowing around 15 knots,
>but we decided to give it a try. We set off with a reef in the main, and the
>jib furled to about 85% of its full area. Outside the harbor, the winds
>were stronger, probably 20-25 knots with gusts over 30 and the seas were
>much bigger. Our course was NNE, but the winds were out of the east rather
>than the southeast. We took in more jib until less than half was showing. We
>were having a rough time with it, and after we got north of the northern
>tip, the waves came in from the east. We saw swells over 8 feet high, and
>due to the tricky currents the seas were getting confused and starting to
>break. We needed to put in a second reef in the main, but the idea of one of
>us up at the mast while we were rolling 60 degrees didn't so good. So, we
>turned around and went back to the marina.
I think it was that Thursday night that a friend of mine was anchored out
at Block Island on her 30-something-foot trawler and reported to me the
other night having watched a sailboat drag its anchor clear across the
harbor, stopping ten feet short, she said, of two other boats, all while
the owners were ashore. She says when they came home they didn't seem to
notice that their boat was no where near where they had left it and, when
she rowed over the next morning to tell them about their near miss, sure
enough, they had been totally oblivious to it. So...it wasn't your
sailboat, was it? <g>
Tim Spofford Kirkland, Washington
tims@spof.org http://spof.org