As a Bulldog, Grover doesn't float. This causes a certain amount of paranoia for my wife. You don't wanna know how many doggie-PFDs we tried out to find one that fit well. The PFD goes on the dog before we leave the house to go to the boat. Still, there's paranoia that he'll go overboard chasing a gull or something. To appease this, my first in-water task of the season was to string safety netting from the lifelines.
around the ENTIRE perimeter of the boat. Why don't I post a pic of the whole boat with all the netting? Because it's butt-ugly, that's why. A crime against all that a boat should be.
The punchline here is that, in order to lead the genoa sheet from block to winch, and then swing a handle on that winch, one must disconnect the lifeline and drop the netting at the cockpit.
Eventually, all of this soothes the paranoia enough that we can actually take the dog sailing. Have you ever gone sailing with a woman who's completely on edge, abjectly refusing to relax and enjoy it? (Nathan, you may have experienced this on Gavin's first sail?). Of course, the dog is happy as a clam, hanging out on the fully-net-protected aft deck, developing remarkable sea legs, taking it all in.
Still, Julia refuses to relax.
(for those who wish to follow along, see NOAA chart 12354)
We leave our home port of Branford Harbor through an unmarked, though well known, side channel, bearing east in a light northeast breeze, thinking of riding this breeze to the Thimble Islands after clearing a reef that doglegs our course. Just as we approach the nun that marks this reef, we sail into a hole and sit, roasting in the sun. Three other sailboats soon join us in our hole. The four of us, rolling in the waves, sails limp, all within beer-throwing distance, must've made an amusing sight to the bevy of powerboats that took joy in steaming through our midst (EVERYONE has to round this mark on their way to the Thimbles).
For those keeping score, Julia is now 1)anxious about the dog 2)hot 3)annoyed by the slapping of the sails 4)pissed at the wake-throwing powerboats.
We now have drifted to within 15 yards of the aforementioned nun bouy. A swarm of black flies, green flies, and an insect we didn't recognize then decided to jump from the bouy to our boat. They don't leave. Julia hates bugs. Atomic-4 to the rescue. Thimble Island lunch plans be damned.
We steam south (directly away from land and bugs) at full throttle for about 20 minutes. This places us about 2 miles offshore, into a blessed 12knot seabreeze from the southwest. Now this is sailing. Content to let dog and wife settle down, we spend a couple of hours on a long starboard tack. A gorgeous yawl crossed 150yards astern of us, and I'm 95% sure it was a Concordia 41. No binoculars on board. I point and say "there's our Lottery Boat". We sail through a school of feeding bluefish. Grover's mouth waters. No fishing rod on board. Grover keeps staring over the leeward rail at something, so Julia picks up her head to see
"the biggest friggin boat I've ever seen!" steaming east from new york.While her head is up, she asks "where the heck are we anyway?". No gps on board. Compass not yet installed, still in the box up in the vberth. I dead-reckon that we're due-south of Faulkner Island, halfway across the Sound. "Well, we're closer to Mattituck than we are to home. Want to stay there for the night?"
Suffice to say that this notion was not met favorably. She had a point... we only had about $14 between us. Coming about!
Ah, but you gotta love a broad reach! It took some fussing, but I managed to rig the spinnaker pole to act as a whisker. Ok, I admit it.... I do love hanging out on the foredeck. There's just something about the sound of that bow wave... However, all of these little trips to the foredeck are putting ideas into the dog's head. He wants to follow me, see if there's anything good to chew on up there, etc. and Julia is stressing over what'll happen if he actually decides to jump the coaming. Of course, he senses her anxiety, and thinks that it's because I'm in danger up on the foredeck, so he gets even more excited and intent on joining me, and it's a big downward spiral.
Eventually, it became evident that Grover was ultimately unwilling to stray far from his water bottle. Eventually, Julia calmed down and accepted that the dog was going to jump around a little but was really in no danger. Eventually, she sat back and appreciated the fact that it was a beautiful day to sail.
I think this mindset adjustment happened just as I finished flaking the mainsail at the mouth of the river.
