March 4: So, winds have moderated. We will wake up at 0400 and get going with 1st light. Try to make CP1 and take it from there.
DolphinGal and Alexo will be going soon, but Wally and I don’t want to run the Intercoastal Waterway @ night. Not sure what Josh and Denise will do. I suspect Macatwa and Santiago will shove off in the am. They are kayakers who showed up at 430pm having had gear failure while underway, but relatively under control going downwind in the wind & waves.
I really enjoyed the conversation with sailors today, held by fireside or out in the yard, especially with Mead Gudgeon (pronounced the French way), and his good friend Hugh. These guys have built more boats than I’ve probably seen in my life! Monsieur Gudgeon was racing ice boats on a frozen-over Cheapeake Bay in 1976 against the lunatic Russians and the fins, and Hugh writes a regular column for Small Craft Advisor, in addition to being an expert canoe builder. Together they collaborated with two other friends to come up with a perfect sailing canoe which was pretty much matching our speed yesterday! Mead’s boat is a work of art.. A strip-planked seamless beauty of ultimate function with minimal hardware, maximal function, and carbon fibre everything: mast, boom kicker/halyard control, rudder and even the seat, which he then covered with polar bear fur! Yes I made that up, but it’s some kind of fur.
Everyone at the sailing club knew these guys, some from decades ago, and they chat about people I know of only through books and articles by and about them so casually, it’s awkward to try to contribute and not appear ridiculous, so you just “smile and nod.”
We had run the boat up on the beach earlier in the day, at the conclusion of our “wild ride.” The full force of the winds blowing the water out of Sarasota Bay plus a high tide around 1100 left our boat high and dry. We went to bed at 2000, woke at 2200 to take advantage of a high tide and successfully pushed the boat into the water and tied her up at a dock at the sailing club. Lines doubled. Now to bed.