Day 25 - Captain Debbie at the helm

I awoke this morning with my portable fan on my chest. The heat was still pretty intense overnight and still wind.  I managed to figure out how to keep myself cool while unconscious, I guess!

It was overcast and a few little sprinkles on my toes in bed let me know we were getting some rain! Captain and I got up and closed all the hatches.  Glad to see the temp drop a little we looked at the mess we had left Ciara in the night before.  Ugh.  With only one bar of service, I couldn’t post my log and was generally feeling pretty blah.  We walked over to the boat house and chatted in the A/C with the staff for a while. Captain enjoyed some coffee. 

The weather was clearing. We decided we really didn’t want to spend the entire week at the marina.  We came back and did all those neglected boat chores of dishes and decluttering. Captain got the life lines attached.   I had to again go down to the bilge and loosen the packing.  Still haven’t had the pump go off once and when we looked, we had a drip well over two minutes apart. The good news is I can now get in and out of there pretty well having done it three times in row.  Got the drip to every 20 seconds and hopefully that will be good.  Captain and I joked that I should put twister stickers on the wall of the bilge and engine to say “left hand, starboard wall, right foot, alternator.”

At noon the skies cleared, the temperature was perfect and the winds steady.  We talked through the dis-embarkment as it is our first time leaving this marina.  Everything went very smooth as this marina has such large fairways!

Last night Brett was reminding us that I need to captain the boat more. Captain agreed. They aren’t wrong.  To my credit, captaining Ciara even scares Brett and Captain concedes while she is very easy to sail, she is still very hard to maneuver in tight spaces and she is very powerful.   Today was a good day for me to work my skill.

While we were working our way out of the Ceder River channel our friend Don Sanford from Betty Lou and many other sailing associations around Madison buzzed us in his cute Cape Dory power boat on their way to Fayette. I blew the conch as they headed east.  Once safely out of the Ceder River channel Captain put me in charge.  Note to self, waters are shallow out of Cedar River.  This just makes short steep waves and they toss the boat around.   Somehow in all that chaos of being tossed left and right, forward and back I managed to steer the boat into the wind and Captain got the sails up.  My temper was thin as the wind was light and, as usual, I was having trouble finding my orientation and keeping us on course with all the new landmarks. Low wind sailing is very hard.  The sails were banging around because they weren’t loaded enough and the waves were forcing them to jerk all while things were flying around (despite my best efforts of securing things down).  About half an hour with the sails up Captain says “there’s the wind! Can’t you feel it??!!”  My mood was sore, I was focusing so hard on keeping her on course I hadn’t really noticed yet and snapped a little at Captain to leave me alone to sail.  Hahaha.  Sure enough about three minutes later I could feel the wind and so could Ciara.  Her sails filled, my course straightened and my mood softened.  Captain even brought up some pistachios to share as we glided along at a nice 5nm/hour.  About two and half hours later I was getting hypnotized by the sail and Captain relived me to go lay down. As always, as soon as I went down the winds picked up even nicer and Captain made much better time. I awoke with us just coming up on the back side of Horseshoe Island, our very first stop nearly 4 weeks ago. Just some fishermen when we arrived and they would be gone by sunset for sure.

It was now dinner time so we made some tacos for Taco Tuesday! Kona spent her time with a nice stick I was so kind to let her bring back to Ciara.  I was quickly reminded to why I don’t let her. We now have mulch all over the dinghy and cockpit!  We took Kona for a walk around the island and enjoyed the sunset walk.  I played Taps a little early so we could go make a fire on shore. I watched a few flocks of pelicans take off and fly around us as I played and the echoes bounced off the escarpment across the way. The moments are always magical. Captain then pulled out his chainsaw as we collected some drinks and blankets. We made a huge fire and enjoyed until around 11pm. 

We loaded the dinghy and as we glided with our electric motor back to Ciara I laid back and marveled at the clear stary night we had.  The milky way was shining bright and the lapping of the water all around was magical.

Wait? Lapping of water? It is dead calm. There are no boats leaving wake, what is that sound?  Captain turned off our little motor and we started to glide back to Ciara. What followed was scene from The Princess Bride. All around us we could see, with the little light from the starts, small ripples` as thousands of fish swirled at the waters edge to feast on an moonless night.  “You hear that princess? That’s the shrieking eels!”  Oh my, that was a bizarre moment for us and a first for sure.  Had we been fishermen and had it even been legal (we don’t even know) that would have been prime picking for sure!

The weather is perfect again and we hope for many more days like this. We will certainly sleep better tonight!

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Day 26 - Becoming a better sailor

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Day 24 - Beating the heat in the Upper Peninsula