The weatherman said it would be sunny on Saturday, but not Sunday, so we put Wrinkles in the water Friday for a one-night excursion. Friends of ours, power boaters, said they were heading to the lake Friday night and wanted to meet up with us for supper. There was absolutely no wind so we began motoring over to the Union to drop anchor. We got a text from the power boat wondering how long it would take us to motor across the lake. We kiddingly texted back that we would meet them for Sunday brunch.
Our friends met us there and Mike rowed us in to the Union and we walked to State Street Brats. We sat outside talking and people watching. After dinner, Mike rowed us back to Wrinkles where we bobbed while enjoying the beautiful evening chatting and listening to the music from the frat house and the Union. Our little homemade dinghy, Squint, was built with us two in mind. It definitely isn't the right dinghy for Mike to row another large male in. Squint did the job though, so all was well. If Brenda has a late growth spurt and gets to be over 6 feet tall we will need to reconsider our choice.
On Saturday we awoke to calm water, cloudy skies, and cool temperatures. It didn't look like much sailing for us. We need to find another weather station! We leisurely ate breakfast and cleaned up the boat. By then there were a few ripples on the water, so we decided to give it a try. We raised the sails and.....inched our way away from our anchorage. We really appreciate our new sails. We wouldn't have moved at all with our old sheets. The sun started to peek out and the breeze picked up to a whomping 2 or 3 knots. Oh, well.....we didn't have anyplace else to be. We took turns at the tiller while the other "kept watch" (napped).
Finally, at about 1:00 the winds picked up and we got to play a little. We experimented with the loose foot and fine-tuned our sail trimming. No wrinkles in our sails today. Then Mike said it was time to practice our man overboard skills. The wind was perfect for a beam reach, consistent, and barely causing us to heel. We pulled out the boat hook (note to selves....we need to find a place for this on deck), grabbed a fender and reviewed what we needed to do. Our first attempt brought us a little off target, but we quickly saw what our turning radius needed to be and made adjustments for the next try.
We took turns at the helm with the other crewing and then we each tried a couple solo rescues. The exercise really got the heart pumping, not from the exertion, but from the magnitude of the "what if's" . Afterwards we congratulated ourselves on a job well done. All of our rescue attempts had been successful. As we settled in for some more relaxed sailing, we noticed our bumper had gotten away from us. "Man overboard" we laughed, and executed a perfect MOB rescue.
Practice makes perfect.
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