The Early Sailor Gets The Weather

But the porpoise is laughing good-bye, good-bye
Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye

                         The Porpoise Song by The Monkeys
 
This weekend rewarded those sailors who rose early and caught the brief moments of nice weather in the mornings.  On Saturday I woke to see Meltemi a C&C 25 sail past the end of Brule Point on a nice easy sail to Cape John, Malagash Point and back to Barrachois Harbour.  I had to finish up wiring my VHF, retro-fitting my new swim ladder and Jude worked on putting teak oil on the toe rails in the morning.  We planned to head out early afternoon for a few hours.
 
The good news is, the radio now works, the swim ladder is great and the toe rail looks beautiful.
 
The bad news is, we rigged the wrong headsail, hoisted the main and #2 jib and the gusts just about knocked us onto the beach.  I dropped the main and we were still doing 7+ knots with just the #2.  Then it started to rain.  That pretty much end the day on the water.  Gaila got out ahead of us.  She has a much smaller main and Larry rigged a working jib.  They headed down the shore towards Bayhead and avoided most of the gusts.  They were cold and very wet when they got back to BHYC.
 
I saw the sun for brief moments on Sunday morning.  Checked the forecast (no rain until mid afternoon) and so we headed for the marina.  There was very little wind, but we were going anyway.  Once we got out of the Barrachois Harbour and channel, the sailing was actually pretty good.  We moved along at a consistent 5-6 knots.  It was a little chilly, but nothing that 3 fleece coats on Jude couldn't fix.
 
We crossed over from BHYC to the end of Malagash Point (right past Katy and Tarjei's) and then turned east and sailed towards Cape John.  I called Abigale a Redline 25 (who was off Sand Point) on the cell phone and did a VHF radio test and everything worked fine.  We sailed in to the Cape John wharf, dodging the lobster pots and turned for home.  We unfortunately lost the wind on the way back and had to motor sail for 30 - 40 minutes.  The wind seemed to turn so we hoisted the 150 Genona and amazing enough did 2-3 knots, against the tide in no wind.  As Jude's dad would have said, "the water was as flat as piss on a plate".  We put on the autohelm and Jude fixed us a nice lunch.  It was very relaxing and very peaceful.
 
Jude spotted a small porpoise which seemed to be circling us as we crossed Penninsula Point.  We watched it for several minutes before dropping the sails for the last time and firing the iron jib. 

It poured rain just as we got back to the cottage, while Jude planted, or should I say, replanted her garden for the second time.
 
It was a good day.  Glad we got up early!