Saturday sailing at the Butte

It's been a long time ...

At long last, I got in my first sail of the year. Pat had managed to sneak off to the lake a couple of times to go sailing with Zorro, but often it was mid-week, which meant I had to work. The one previous time I had gotten to the lake, the wind was just too fierce -- if the temperature had been warmer, it might have been good exciting sailing, but that day was just too cold.

Saturday, however, was much less windy. In fact, when we got to the lake, there was barely any wind at all. We joined Zorro and set sail on Constellation, hoping that perhaps some wind would fill in.

We had been drifting for about an hour when the wind did, finally, show up. It wasn't much, maxing out at probably 7 or 8 knots, but that's enough to make an Etchells go. Zorro had his handheld GPS, and we got up to 6.2 knots upwind and even faster downwind with the spinnaker up.

Pat was in charge of the spinnaker. He kept the trim up, and he's getting good at gybing the pole smoothly; that's something he and Zorro apparently practiced a lot the last time they were out.

Overall, it was a good couple of hours on the water.

We sailed until near sunset.

There weren't many other boats out. One friend had gone out earlier but gave up on waiting for wind and came in (his wife had chores for him to do anyway). Another came out late in the day. You can tell he's from Michigan; he was sailing in shirt sleeves!

Maybe, in between things like taking care of Pat's dad's estate and working on repairs (both boat and house) and various other tasks, we will have more time to sail this year.