Running From The Storm

Since yesterday was the Summer Solstice, Dave and I thought we'd take advantage of the extra daylight and sail around the harbor islands, enjoying the latest sunset of the year. Unfortunately, Boston is in its typical summer weather pattern of late day/early evening building of clouds and thunderstorms. Last night was no exception.

Checked the radar at the sailing center before heading out and it looked like we'd be ok. The storms appeared to be moving north of us. We rigged the sails, ticked off items on our mental checklist, and headed out. As soon as we were far enough out, we headed into the wind, cut the engine and raised the sails. Uh. "What's up with that jib?" asks Dave. "It looks weird." Hmmmm.. "Yeah, it looks weird for a jib because it's not a jib. That's a genoa.", I say. "And we don't have the sheets rigged right for it. Besides, there's too much wind for the genoa."

The only way I can tell the difference between the sails when they're folded is by side by side comparison. He had simply handed me the sail from below deck, I rigged it and we didn't realize until we raised it that ooops, wrong sail. So I got the fun job of going out on the bow, taking down the genoa, stowing it below, bringing up the jib, rigging it, tying on the sheets and getting it going while Dave held us steady and tried not to dump me in the harbor. Finally, success and we were off sailing.

During all this, the storm clouds continued to build but still seemed far off. The wind really picked up and soon we were doing about 7 kts out of the harbor. Took us 45 min to cover what took 2 hours the other afternoon in light wind. Zoom! Then, the wind just died. Zip. Nada. We joked about the calm before the storm. The weather gods took that comment as an opportunity to mock us and sent bolts of lightening over Logan Airport and grumbled with thunder at us. Dave and I looked at each other with the same wide-eyes, both thinking, uh oh...what do we do? Hide behind Spectacle Island, of course. Fortunately, the wind picked up at that point and we set our course to the channel behind Spectacle. The clouds continued to look threatening, the wind continued to be a steady 10 kts or so, gusting to 15. As we came around Spectacle, the wind totally died again. We watched a rainbow appear over Long Island, bobbed around on the glassy sea, waiting for more wind. And waited. And waited. And waited some more. Ok, pull down the jib. Start the motor. ~sigh

And what happens as soon as we get into the harbor? Wind picks up again like crazy. The Solings were out racing and zig zagging across the harbor with some nice speed. Too bad the wind was right out of the west and in the direction we were headed. Grrrr...... Also made folding up not one, but two sails, all that more interesting once we docked.


Whatever. Just so happy to be out on the water. Great evening. And check out the chart below for a graphical pic of what our wind profile looked like last evening.