Sailing Mademoiselle

We joined our friends Dave and Carol Leach aboard their Beneteau 44.7 Mademoiselle for a Sunday sail on the Chesapeake.  Mademoiselle is a relatively new Bruce Farr design, insanely cool, beautiful, blue-water equipped sailing vessel.  At almost 45' LOA, she handled like a dream.  Dave gave me the helm for almost the entire time out.  It was very cool to have this level of trust from him and I had a blast finding her groove!

Carol and Eileen having a chat as we just got underway 

I think I smiled the entire time!  Thanks Carol and Dave for the invite and the wonderful afternoon!

Catching up

Various pics from spring/early summer 2012.  So much sailing...so little time to blog!

Sister-in-law Jane and Eileen 

Eileen's brother Ron, visiting from Buffalo 

Dang crab pots! Water was 60 degrees mid-May! 

Solomon's Island

This is just funny ^^^
More pics from our May cruise follow...

Jamie chill'n

 

Impressive speed 7.4 kts

Eileen's version of chill'n errrrrr...chilly!

 

Our dockmate's schooner

Jamie's new hangout

HHS 7/5 - 7/7 2012

After the Fourth of July holiday, we set sail for Herrington Harbor South, a resort marina about 20 NM south of Annapolis.  Zoli, our crazy Hungarian exchange student whom we hosted several years ago came back to the States for another visit.  The winds were light, the sun was relentless, with air temps over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  It cooled off to 85 degrees at night...woohoo!  To venture out on a trip like this in extreme heat causes one to think he should have his head examined!  (pictured above "Forever Eileen" I like it!)

Knowing ahead of time that it was going to be hot, I purchased a 12 volt fan for Jamie.  The fan worked well and kept him cool while we were underway.

A pic of Domingoman from across the marina.  Photo credit to Eileen as she took this pic while on a walk with Zoli.

In order to keep the cabin somewhat cool, I hung a tarp over the boom to shade the coach roof.  Best quote of the trip..."Chris, I like what you did with the IKEA bag!"  circa Zoli!  The IKEA bag is large for a bag, but isn't 9'X12'!!!

Having drinks with our friends, Glenn and Sunny at Mangos (S/V Solare).  The house specialty is orange or grapefruit crush.  Tropical treats with lots of rum!

So, after sweating it out Thursday night, I called a meeting of the crew on Friday morning.  Each had one vote and I had two!  Choices were to leave HHS on Friday and go back home to air conditioning and lose the money we paid for the slip on Friday night, or gut it out again. Zoli and Jamie immediately said, let's stay.  I kind of shrugged my shoulders and asked Eileen what she thought.  She said let's stay...so stay we did.  We spent the entire day poolside jumping in every 10 minutes to cool off.  Then Eileen had a brainstorm...she said, why don't we sail back to Annapolis tonight.  What a great idea!  We left HHS at 21:00 and arrived Port Annapolis at 00:30.  It was much cooler and we had the bay to ourselves.  The moon was almost full and we had an amazing time!  The one very cool thing was seeing all of the bioluminescent jellyfish light up as our bow wake disturbed them.  Apparently, jellies do this as a defense mechanism.  In spite of the heat, we had a great trip!  

The Derecho 6.29.2012

On Friday night, we experienced a storm that left us without power for two days. A derecho, according to Wikipedia is a "widespread and long-lived straight-line windstorm that is associated with a fast-moving band of severe thunderstorms." The howling wind woke me up at 23:00. Impressive lightning filled the sky as the wind flexed her mighty muscle and seemed to be winning the battle with the mature 100+ foot trees that line our neighborhood. The power went out without a flicker which is usually bad news. According to the Washington Post, this storm left over 5 million people without power from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic and was responsible for at least 22 deaths. See: Could forecasters have better predicted the June 29 Derecho? by clicking here.


It didn’t take long for me to figure out that this system was coming out of the West, the only direction that Domingoman is not protected. Eileen and Jamie were still in Denver, so I grabbed Shiloh and we headed to the boat. I weaved the car through what looked like a war zone with limbs and branches everywhere. Fortunately, Port Annapolis Marina is very nearby to our home and there were no power lines blocking our way.

I was happy to see that the power at the marina was not interrupted and that Domingoman remained well secured. I went back home to pick up a couple of essentials and we headed back to the boat to spend the night on board.

It was stifling hot on Saturday so Shiloh and I went out for a sail. The air temp on the Chesapeake was at least 10 degrees cooler than on land and we enjoyed sustained 12kt winds out of the South. We sailed 17NM in 3 ½ hours!

Sunday was round two of the heat with the air temp of 97 degrees and high humidity. Eileen and Jamie were now home from Denver and we spent most of the day in the air conditioned Chessie Lounge at Port Annapolis. Power was restored at our home on Sunday evening.