Finally, after having been here for over a week, I got Zanshin out of jail at the docks and departed. In typical sailing manner, I didn’t know where I was going to sail to until I untied the dock lines. Originally I thought I’d do the usual short sail across the Sir Francis Drake channel to Norman Island and the Bight& but changed my mind to use the light winds forecast for today and make it to the shelter of the North Sound before the strong winds returned on Saturday and Sunday. The sail felt absolutely wonderful, I was averaging about 6 knots with occasional 8 knots tempered by other times with just 4 knots. I got to reef and unreef the sails a couple of times as squall lines with rain passed through and all in all it was a great start to the sailing season and everything aboard the boat worked flawlessly (well, almost flawlessly, I need to check the autopilot settings for tacking since the auto-tack put me in irons twice). I sailed through the North sound entrance channel while a big ketch passed me with sails up (but engine going full-blast) and a mega yacht was on my tail and, to top it off, another mega yacht zoomed through the channel at speed with a towed dingy about 500 behind them. Their wake was so big that, even though I turned into it, I got splashed in the cockpit! But after getting into the calm waters of the North Sound Zanshin picked up speed and I was going 8-9 knots between the mega yachts at anchor while charter sailboats with their sails down were motoring much slower than I was travelling. I anchored off Prickly Pear in 40 feet of water and after I’d put up the anchor ball day shape and put the instruments and lines to sleep I rang the happy hour bell and had a well-deserved sundowner at about 18:00.
Dinner was a simple affair – two filet mignons (one really would have sufficed, but I BBQ’d both anyway) that I’d marinated for an hour in olive oil and various spices accompanied by a baked potato. The steaks were great, I barely needed to use the knife and it was the best meal I’d had in months. Not only was I hungry, the meat was just what I’d wanted and the location was perfect.
This was what I’d been pining for in recent months!
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