Mark Twain had some quote about casting off lines, dreaming and discovering. As hackneyed as that quote has become in sailing circles, turns out the old man was right. Things are pretty good out here, far far away from the marina.
In retrospect, a couple of weeks spent in the yard and marina working on sweaty, diesely projects is a small (and predictable) price to pay when acquiring a 27 year old boat that we’d never laid eyes on before. Felt like an outer circle of hell at the time, but I was just being whiny.
So we’re on our 4th day off the dock now. We’re anchored in North Sound in Virgin Gorda after a fine day beating up Drake Channel, seeing how this old girl works to weather. Not bad, it turns out. We put a lickin’ to every boat we saw tacking up the channel. Granted, they may not have known we were racing, but I firmly believe that if two sailboats are headed in the same direction, all parties are honor-bound to put up a fight.
We’re pretty happy with how Paradox performs. She’s got a shoal keel (5′ draft), so she doesn’t point like a racing boat, but we were still managing to keep our tacks to 90 degrees and averaging 5 knots in not much more than 10 knots of breeze while sailing hard on the wind. We’ve got a long broad reach tomorrow, so hopefully she’ll really open up with the wind aft of the beam.
Nights at anchor have been mighty pleasant as well. We’ve made the typical stops – Norman, Peter, Cooper, and now Virgin Gorda. High season hasn’t quite kicked in yet, so while we’re far from the only boat in the anchorages, it’s nothing like the mayhem I’ve experienced here in March.
We’re adjusting to the rhythm of life out here quickly. The sun makes its presence known early, as she is wont to do, and there’s not much resisting her onslaught. We start with a swim followed by coffee. I make lists of all the things that broke on the boat in the last day. And then I don’t fix the things. And go swimming again. We tend to start the day by saying “we really need to run back to Nanny Cay to top off supplies and get parts from Budget Marine.” Then we go sailing instead. This is the second day in a row in which we left the anchorage well-intentioned with business on the brain and ended up sailing further away from Nanny Cay rather than towards it. It’s real easy to hang an unplanned tack once you get out into the channel and the breeze pipes up. This is the greatest luxury we’ve found so far. The ability to change our plans on a dime, ’cause we’ve got no one waiting for us and no where to be. Weather will change all that, but so far we’ve been on easy street.
Another perk of the lifestyle is already becoming evident. We met Katie and Jessie (from www.katieandjessieonaboat.com – the best body of writing and photography about young people cruising that’s out there) at the Annapolis Boat Show a few weeks ago and Jessie told us that they’d made “boat mom’s and dad’s” along their journey and we would too. It’s true. We saw a St. Louis Cardinal’s flag flying on a charter cat next to us last night, went over to say hi, and found ourselves in great conversation and flank steak with a big group of retired couples for the rest of the night. These unexpected little bonds will likely prove to be one of the true highlights of this journey.
I don’t have a hell of a lot else to report. Things are fine, just fine. Water’s warm, fish are doing fishy things, and the livin’s all right.
12 Comments
Leave your reply.