12. 14 miles with Tracy & Jim

11.

Out with the sun up, in with the moon up.

10. Sail & Swim with Dan, Sherri, and Alli

What a great day today was: hot and not too windy. I had been watching the wind all day, kind of glad it was coming from the north because I like sailing out of the creek (with a southerly breeze we can sail into the creek, of course, but it gets a little temperamental up past the Crispy Condos*).

But by the time our guests arrived, the wind had veered around to the southwest. We could almost sail close-hauled out to the Bay, but I left the engine going to help us get out faster.

Then off we went to the south and then toward the bridge. We were hot and once we made that little left to the east the wind was coming behind us enough to get us even hotter. A swim was definitely in order. We got through the bridge and managed to evade whatever that funk water is falling off the roadway construction. Part of me thinks it's really just water, but another part of me strongly believes that if it spilled on us our hair would fall out.

I expected the wind-shadow of the bridge to make a nice flat section for us to swim in. Not so much, though I guess I could have sneaked closer and closer to the bridge. Once we anchored it wasn't long before all four of us were in the water. It was so warm! We swam for an hour and even had a nice cold beer while we bobbed around.

We sailed back and managed to get pretty far up the creek under sail alone, but for some reason the program I used to track this didn't finish the recording even though it's supposed to keep working in the background.


*so named because of the fire one of the units had shortly after they opened.

the animated Handy Guide to the Racing Rules of Sailing

See it for yourself instead of trying to figure out what they're trying to say!

Heart of Sailing Foundation

...the Heart of Sailing Foundation (HOS) is a non-profit international organization that introduces sailing to children with developmental disabilities as a form of education and recreational therapy."

9. Sunset sailing with Alli

8. Happy Birthday, America!

Alli and I went out after breakfast and tried to clean the bottom for the first time this year. I was worried about the grime on the hull and how many barnacles would be on the propeller and I had good reason to be. The barnacles were intense. All along the hull, on both sides, pretty much up to the waterline, were big patches of small barnacles. Bad. I had a nice shallow spot where I could touch the bottom, plant my feet, and really lean on the green scrubbie.

But after I had gotten about halfway down the port side we had to move because of the 4th of July regattas. Bummer. We were anchored right in the middle of the Opti course.

So we moved, but there were race courses all over the place. I thought if we got right next to the sandbar off the cove we'd be in shallow water again. But when we anchored, the water was too deep to touch with one good push from the top. And more power boats were out, zooming by creating a whole mess of chop. This makes the back of the boat go up and down and creates a kind of video game situation: can you get anything scrubbed before the stern comes crashing down on the top of your head, giving you the Mother of all Concussions, or breaking your head open and giving the crabs all that knowledge to eat.

The most important thing was getting the barnacles off the prop so I could actually get the boat moving under power. Before I even got into the water I dropped my goggles overboard, so I'd have to work by feel instead of by actually looking at what I was doing. Great. Right to the prop I went, and using the big scraper, got some condo-sized barnacles off the blades of the prop. Cleaning barnacles by feel is like cleaning barbed wire in the dark. My fingers look like they went through an industrial paper shredder.

Home we went, with three quarters of the bottom still acting as a host organism for a barnacle colony. (They've since organized Committees of Correspondence, sent me their own Olive Branch Petition, their own Declaration of Independence, and formed a Keelinental Congress.)

But there was some good news:

Rob & AJ came out for some BBQ!

And then we went out for some fireworks watching:

this is not good:

"Suffolk County's bays are polluted by nitrogen and one main reason is the outdated household cesspools all around them, says Kevin McAllister, head of the non-profit environmental advocacy group Peconic Baykeeper," in this article in the Riverhead News Review.