On a lark, I decided to do things in reverse order. Spinnaker first!
4knots boatspeed in 6knots of wind. Not too shabby. The boat was moving well, and a bit of cloudcover kept the heat within a range of comfort despite the near-zero apparent wind. The day was off to a good start. I didn't even mind so much when we ran out of searoom and had to douse the chute and hoist main and jib for a bit of windward work.
The breeze died away a bit at a time, of course. We eventually found ourselves completely becalmed about 100yds to leeward of the local bigboat race's finish line. There was some comfort in the knowlege that the racers had to be more frustrated than we were. They'd been roasting out there for hours. At least we had good sandwiches. There was some perverse sort of fun in hearing each engine fire less than 5 seconds after the finishing signal to the HOORAY of the crew.
Once lunch was cleaned up, I started paying attention again and got a half knot of mojo going back toward harbor. The half knot was getting harder and harder to maintain, however, as the nearer we got to the harbor the more we were flopped around by the wakes of boats powering in for THE BEST DAMN FIREWORKS SHOW AROUND.
Of course, the last 1/4 mile suddenly had a good solid ten knots of breeze, isn't that always the way??
I suppose I was in a fairly seamanlike mood, but still anchoring under sail is generally more fun, don't you think? It always seems silly to fire up the engine just to set the hook and then shut it down again five minutes later. Perhaps because there was no engine noise, I was able to hear a "yooo hoooooo" over my shoulder just as the hook hit the mud.
Hey, that dinghy looks oddly familiar...... almost as if I'd built it or something....
My brother and his fiancee had pirated my dinghy and rowed out to the harbor, guessing that we'd be anchoring for the fireworks. Luckily, they brought a bag of goodies along with them. We aren't really set up for entertaining, but who needs a corkscrew when you have a claw hammer and a bunch of fasteners on board?
It was a pleasant afternoon of swimming and drinking and snacking and drinking and relaxing and drinking. The wine was flowing just freely enough to keep up with the dark&stormys. I even had the presence of mind to take a lap around the anchorage with the camera at near-dusk.
Eventually the sun yielded to the real show of the night.
A steady hand doesn't mean much in a breezy anchorage, eh?
Of course, the comedy act starts after the fireworks have ended. See, the fireworks are launched from the town pier, which defines the mouth of the river. The authorities naturally close the river to traffic as part of establishing a safe-distance perimeter from the launch site, and it takes a while for them to declare all-clear after the show. Despite this perfectly logical scenario, the following happens EVERY SINGLE YEAR:
1. about a third of the boats hurriedly weigh anchor in an asinine attempt to beat the rush back into the river. Because they're in such a rush, they haven't let their night vision recover from the fireworks, and they break out the million-candlepower spotlights, and all hope of recovery evaporates.
2. these boats gather at the perimeter bouys, jockeying for position to be the first-released when the river is opened.
3. these boats inevitably gather too closely together, and their jockeying for postion becomes an exercise in closequarters collision avoidance.
4. Some band of wiseguys try to sneak past the harbor patrol by hugging the shoreline and running without lights. the harbor patrol has radar, of course, and descends upon the wiseguys with the customary fury of law enforcement personnel who've spent an entire saturday night shepherding a gaggle of boozed-up idiots.
5. At last, the river is opened, and because "they can't get all of us", all sense of speed limit or no-wake zone is abandoned as thirty boats make for the 4-boat-wide river mouth. Sooner or later someone fouls someone else and a battle of words and spotlights ensues.
Because we elect to sit back and watch all of the above from a distance before getting underweigh, it's near midnight by the time we're secured to the dock, and well into the wee hours before heads hit pillows.
We returned to the boat today (more than mildly hung over) purely for the purpose of putting away and cleaning up. I need to get back to the office for a few hours anyway.
Of course.... it's blowing 12-18 kts.
