Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Today was a great sailing day, I departed The Bight rather late at about 10am, again with no fixed destination in mind, and set out toward Road Town. I had a the third reef in the mainsail and full genoa out and the boat balanced beautifully in 10-15 knots of true and 22 knots or so of apparent wind. The autopilot, when in “wind mode”, sets off a nasty beeping when the wind shifts 15 degrees or more and one needs to hit both the “standby” and “auto” buttons at the same time, but if one doesn’t hit them simultaneously the autopilot goes into “standby” mode and shuts itself off. This happened to me twice yesterday without my noticing it and Zanshin I was so well-balanced that the boat held course and I didn’t notice what had happened until 15 minutes later.
I once again decided to sail to The Baths but, how could it be otherwise, the red flags were up again and I could see the waves wash all the way to the top of the beach. I continued on to the North Sound and called Leverick Bay on the VHF to see if I could get a slip for the night; that would let me charge up the batteries and also do some much-needed laundry and vacuuming in the boat. I went to Jumbies for a small dinner and then met a father and daughter who were walking the docks and invited them aboard, we ended up chatting until 11pm and I went to bed immediately thereafter since I had a 2-tank dive planned for 7:45am the next day.
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